A chilly winter breeze snaked its icy tendrils around Sunset’s neck, causing her to shiver. Man, did she wish she still had her scarf right now.

A muffled bell caught her attention. She turned towards the high school and watched as, mere seconds later, students started pouring out of it. She pushed herself up from the Wondercolts statue and took a step forward, scanning the crowd for her friends.

Familiar faces passed by Sunset, some of which slowed to take second glances at her. She didn’t blame them, she’d been absent from school a week now and still had bruising on her eye, probably making her an alarming sight. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Flash Sentry come to a halt. He hesitated, but, just when it looked like he was about to approach, he was beaten to it.

“Sunny!” Pinkie Pie dived into a hug.

“Heya, Pinkie,” Sunset hugged her in return.

The rest of their friends were soon upon them.

“Sunset, dear, how are you not freezing?” Rarity asked.

“Yea, why’d ya insist on meetin’ us here instead’a back at your place?” Applejack asked.

Sunset opened her mouth to respond, but was cut short.

As if on cue the platinum wall beside her began to warp. It rippled like water, the stone bending in a way that defied all known laws of physics. The ripple swelled in size, until finally there was a blinding flash, followed by a loud ‘thump’.

“Ow…”

“TWILIGHT!”

Her friends all squealed, dragging the dazed girl off the ground and up into a group hug. Sunset watched from the side, sporting a weak smile. As the original Twilight recovered from her fall and came to her senses, her eyes instantly locked in on Sunset. Without a word, she pulled herself free from her friends and snatched Sunset into a tight hug.

“Sunset, I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

Sunset smiled and hugged the girl in return.

“It’s okay. No big deal now, I’m over it,” she chuckled.

Twilight pulled away.

“No big deal?! You were- oh, Celestia, your eye!” Twilight gasped.

Sunset blushed. She shrugged and rubbed her arm, embarrassed.

“I’m better now, anyway.”

Twilight sighed. “I know, but I should have been here for you! You shouldn’t have gone through this alone.”

Sunset smiled, “I didn’t go through it alone.”

Twilight turned her attention back to the girls who had helped her up. They stood watching her with attentive eyes, completely over the fact she’d just rudely pushed past them all to get to Sunset. Twilight returned to them.

“Hey girls,” she said softly.

“Howdy, Twi,” Applejack gave a knowing smile and tipped her Stetson.

“Welcome back dear,” Rarity smiled.

“It’s so good to see you again!” Fluttershy chimed in.

“THIS MEANS WE GET A WELCOME BACK TWI-PARTY!”

“Awww yeah, two Twilights again!” Rainbow fist pumped.

Twilight’s eyes grew wide. Her attention was now drawn over to the mirror image of herself, stood a few feet back from the group. She offered the girl a weak smile.

“Hey… other me,” she waved to her.

Human Twilight shuffled uncomfortably in her feet, and returned the polite smile.

“Hi.”

The awkward gaze Twilight shared with the girl broke as she turned back around to Sunset.

“How have you been doing?” she asked.

Sunset smiled and nodded. “A lot better actually. Especially with these girls helping me.”

“Awww yeah!” Rainbow slid in, wrapping her arm around Sunset’s shoulder. “We’ve got her back now, ain’t no mean, nasty sirens gonna mess with her while we’re around!”

“What Rainbow Dash means is…” Rarity interrupted, “we’ve been doing our best to help Sunset recover since what happened. It’s not been easy, but I think I speak for her when I say she’s on the fast road to recovery.”

“That’s great!” Twilight turned to Sunset, “So you’ve already told them?”

Sunset’s smile faded.

“I was er... actually just about to when you showed up,” she chuckled.

“Tell us what?” Fluttershy asked.

“Sunset’s got a plan, haven’t you?” Twilight smiled at her companion.

All eyes fell on their bacon-haired friend.

“A plan fer what?” Applejack frowned.

“Sunset,” Rarity pulled her hands up into a prayer, “please don’t tell us this has anything to do with those awful girls again.”

Sunset smiled nervously at her friends.

“Aww geez, I thought you were over them!” Rainbow swatted the air in annoyance.

“Ehh… well, not… exactly.”

Suddenly the cold air didn’t seem to bother her as much anymore. She shuffled around uncomfortably. Rarity’s pained expression was not oblivious to her.

“Soooo… erm…” Sunset looked around for assistance, “… remember when we all went out looking for them?”

The group nodded.

Sunset’s heart slowed, and she couldn’t bring herself to explain any further. She suddenly found herself back where she was when she first explained her plan to look for The Dazzlings, only this time she didn’t have the reassurance that she knew she was right.

The words refused to leave her throat. She tried pushing them, almost tried dry heaving, but they refused to budge.

“That… waaaaassssss a nice day out, wasn’t it?”

The group all exchanged confused glances.

“Ah… guess?” Applejack asked.

Sunset nodded. “It was nice, we should all do that again sometime.”

“Is that what you wanted to tell us?” Rarity asked.

Sunset forced a smile through her teeth.

“Yeaaahhh… about that… I kind of…. I’ve actually forgotten what it was.” she nodded.

Her friends didn’t seem convinced.

Twilight stepped in. “Sunset, should I tell them?”

“No! Er, I can do it. It’s fine,” she snapped.

She took a breath.

“Well… when Rainbow and I went off looking for them we kinda…” she lit her lip, “well, we… It’s… it’s complicated.”

The group all exchanged glances.

“Ah don’t think ah like there this is goin’… Ew, first offs,” Applejack grimaced.

Rainbow punched her in the side. “It’s not like that, dummy!”

“No, no no!” Sunset held her hands up, “It’s nothing like that. It’s… we… we did find something.”

That perked the group’s attention more. Sunset swore they all leaned in a few inches, though that could have been the wind. What definitely wasn’t the wind was Twilight moving in closer and placing a supportive hand on her shoulder.

“What did ya’ll find?” Applejack asked.

“An alien.”

“An alien?”

“Sunset!” Twilight snapped.

“There was no alien.”

“Ah didn’t think there was, if ah’m honest.”

“Sunset,” Twilight shook her head, “would you like me to tell them?”

Turns out Sunset was actually quite competitive.

Who’d have guessed, right?

Often all she needed was to feel as though she had to prove herself, and that allowed her to push her boundaries.

“We found where they live.”

“The aliens!?”

“The Dazzlings, Pinkie Pie.”

The group’s reaction to her statement was instantaneous.

“Oh my…” Fluttershy looked down.

“Are you both alright?!” Rarity almost shrieked.

“Yer kiddin’,” Applejack squinted.

“So, did you see them? Did you speak to them?” Pinkie asked.

“We didn’t see them,” Sunset shook her head, “they weren’t home. But we did get a good look around their flat. And let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty.”

The girls all fell silent, waiting on Sunset’s next words. She took a breath and started from the beginning.

She started with them deciding to call it a day and about the sense of relief she’d felt as her security returned. Then about the elderly man who had approached them, and what he’d said to them. When her story began to raise disagreeable glances between her friends, she tried pushing that the decision to follow up the lead alone was her acting solely on impulse.

“Rainbow Dash, you should have known better!” Rarity scolded.

“She was yer responsibili’ and you could a’ gotten ya both hurt!” Applejack snapped.

Rainbow threw her hands up in defense.

“Hey, she was going either way! What was I supposed to do, let her go alone?! No way!”

“It wasn’t Rainbow’s fault, I dragged her into it.” Sunset defended her friend. “She followed me willingly into danger because she didn’t want me to get hurt. And she did try to talk me out of it.”

Applejack and Rarity’s didn’t falter in their death glares, but they did draw quiet. Sunset continued her story, and finally brought it to a close as she described the apartment. The girls listening all exchanged uncomfortable looks.

“It was horrible in there… like an addicts’ den,” Sunset grimaced, “and they didn’t have any food. Like, at all. I’m all one for them getting their comeuppance, but that was unreal.”

The group all had their own reactions to hearing about the poverty Sunset described. Applejack remained stone faced, almost refusing to show emotion. Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy looked deflated, their gaze met the ground as their feet played games with the stones. Rainbow stood with her arms crossed, staring intently into the distance. Human Twilight was the only one whose eyes remained fixed on Sunset, who looked like she was still waiting for the story to finish.

Beside her, Princess Twilight nudged her slightly, and offered her a proud nod.

“And where does ya plan fit into all this?” Applejack asked.

Sunset winced.

“Yeaah… this is the part I get a feeling you aren’t all going to be happy about.”

“This is the worst idea in the history of worst ideas.”

“We know, you’ve said.”

“Ah’m talkin’ Applebloom tryin’ to train Winona to milk the cows kinda bad.”

“We know, dear.”

“Ah’m talkin’ Big Mac’s attempt to repaint the barn without usin’ a ladder kinda bad.”

“Applejack, we get the point.”

“Ah’m talkin’ making a doohickey tha’ can capture magic tha’ don’t have an off-switch and can tear apart space and time, bad.”
“Hey!”

“Applejack,” Rarity turned around, “none of us are entirely thrilled about this either, but please, Sunset thinks this will work and as her friends we owe it to her to stand by her.”

Applejack shook her head.

“If Sunset thought jumpin’ off a cliff would solve her problems, would you let her do it?”

“That’s a completely different scenario!” Rarity snapped.

“Is it?” Applejack stressed. “Lettin' her do somethin’ like this is just as dangerous and stupid!”

“But we are here for her during it. At least this way if she’s making a wrong decision we can be here to protect her from its consequences.”

“So you admit she’s makin’ the wrong decision?”

“I said if, IF! Don’t try twisting my words like that.”

“Who’s twistin’ anything? The only side I’m on is the side that doesn’t get Sunset, or us for that matter, hurt.”

“You two argue a lot," Twilight observed.

“Rarity starts it.”
“Applejack starts it!”

The two girls met in a vicious glare-off.

“Shut up, we’re here,” a voice up ahead said.

The group came to a halt. They were all squished into a narrow corridor, the carpet and wallpaper around them matching in both in filth and dreariness. The only light came from the few hanging bulbs above them that still worked, making it difficult to identify the numbers on doors that surrounding them. It was a place no teenage girl should ever hope to be, but to two girls in the group it was a sight too familiar.

“It’s this way,” Sunset whispered.

Sunset led them, with Rainbow and Princess Twilight following protectively behind. She walked slowly, her hands gripped tightly into fists and a cold sweat running down her neck. Her heart was in her mouth, but she knew it was too late to back out now. And she didn’t want to, everything she’d done had built up to this moment; she was going to do this.

They drew closer to the door in question.

A cold wave rushed over Sunset as she felt a familiar fear begin to rise in her. The dangling lights above began to grow harsher, giving life to a nagging pain in the back of her head. Freezing water began seeping in around her as the hallway walls suddenly rose ten feet, blocking off any escape.

Sunset forced out a breath and carried on forward. The water around her pushed and tugged, but she refused to let it move her. It felt weird, like the water wasn’t wet. Instead it felt like static, it fizzed, as though her entire bottom half had suddenly been removed. If she looked down she was positive she’d just see her torso floating in the air.

But she didn’t look down, her gaze was fixed on the door rapidly getting closer. The more it drew near, the harsher it glared back at her. By the time she was feet away, the water was almost to her shoulders, and dark spots had begun dipping in and out of her vision.

She felt a familiar presence rest on her shoulder, causing her to blink.

The water was suddenly gone. The walls were their normal size. Princess Twilight stood behind her.

“You ready for this?” she asked.

Sunset didn’t answer, but nodded. She rehearsed her words in her head.

The group behind all braced themselves. Applejack and Rainbow shifted their weight from side to side, taking on a strong posture. Rarity forced out a breath and put on her best death glare. The two Twilights remained still, squeezing tightly onto the air they held in their lungs. Fluttershy and Pinkie swallowed nervously.

Sunset lifted her already clenched fist and knocked. The knock was loud enough to echo through the dreary corridor, but not strong enough to force the door open like last time.

For a joyful moment, there was complete silence.

Then a thump.

Sunset’s blood ran cold.

Another thump.

Quiet whispers.

A louder thump.

There were people on the other side of that door… and they were getting closer.

Sunset bit her lip.

The thumping of her heart was beginning to drain out the ever-approaching footsteps.

She swallowed. She could taste pennies.

The next events took place in a matter of seconds, but felt to Sunset like they stretched out over an hour.

The door creaked open, allowing a partially hidden face to peak through the gap. A magenta eye caught Sunset’s own. For that brief second, Sunset held the person’s gaze. The eye widened.

Despite the door only being opened inches, the bang it made getting slammed shut was enough to shake the building.

There was another thump from behind the door, this time a louder one. It was quite obviously the sound of something hitting the door on the other side, most likely the owner of the eye trying to block them from entering.

A silence fell over the group as they stood in silence.

Eventually it was Rarity who finally spoke up.

“Well, that was rude,” she huffed.

“Rarity!” Princess Twilight scolded.

“Well it was!”

Twilight turned back to Sunset, whose gaze was still fixed on the door.

“Sunset?” she asked.

The girl didn’t respond.

‘Right there. Sweet Celestia, she was RIGHT there.’

“Suns-”

“Adagio! It’s Sunset! Sunset Shimmer, from Canterlot High?” Sunset announced loudly.

“I think she remembers you…” Rainbow said under her breath, earning her a glare from Princess Twilight.

Sunset continued, unfazed. “I’m not here to fight, I just want to talk to you! I know it was you girls who jumped me the other week.”

Quiet whispers were audible from the other side of the door. Sunset’s group exchanged nervous glances.

“Look, I’m not mad,” she thought for a second, ”well okay, I am, but that’s not why I’m here! Please can you open the door? I’m just here to talk, I promise!”

The whispers died down, but that was it. Sunset didn’t know whether to take that as a rejection or as a go ahead, but she didn’t care. She was here to say her part.

“Look, I’ve been where you’ve been, okay? I know what it’s like to have lost everything. I know what it feels like to get drunk on life: you stop appreciating how good you already have it, you become lazy and reckless, and then you do one stupid thing and it’s all over! Everything you worked for is gone, and you get that desperate for things to return to normal that you just pray you’ll wake up and everything will have been a dream! You don’t even care about your goals anymore, you’d just give anything for life to go back to the way it used to be. All you want to do right now is hit the reset button, because it’s absolutely impossible to go on from where you are now.”

Rarity and Applejack exchanged worried looks. Sunset took a ragged breath and continued.

“I’ve been there and I know how hopeless it feels. I know it feels like you can’t go on. But you can, because I did.”

Princess Twilight turned to Sunset with a small smile.

“My friends, they helped me,” Sunset gestured back at her group. “Everything that happened to me, I did to myself; I was the bad guy and got what I deserved. But they saw where I was in life, and they chose to help me. They didn’t need to, they did it out of the goodness of their hearts, because they are good people. Nobody wants to see anybody else suffer. And now… Now I’ve got it all back, it’s better than ever, in fact! And I know now to appreciate what I have, because I’ve experienced life with nothing. I’m so grateful to these girls for helping me the way they did, I had no idea what powers the magic of friendship had. Every day I spend with them is heaven… and I know what that feels like, because I’ve lived in hell.”

She sniffed, and blinked away the wet forming in her eyes.

“I didn’t care about you girls after the Battle of the Bands. You were the villains and we defeated you, that was it! Then, after what you did to me, I hated you. I was terrified of you, I couldn’t sleep in my own bed without waking up to nightmares! Now I see…. Now I see that I was wrong. We were all wrong. What you did to me in that alley was my fault – my fault for not extending the same kindness to you that my friends did to me. I abandoned you, I was being selfish.”

Rarity opened her mouth to argue, but was cut short by a silencing gesture from Princess Twilight.

“That’s why I’m here now. I know what you girls are going through, and I want to do for you what these girls for me. I want to help, I want… I want us to be friends," Sunset bit her lip. "What do you say?”

As Sunset finished her speech, she imagined the girls’ responses. She imagined the siren girls, filthy and skinny, to swing open their apartment door and welcome them inside, ready to embrace the future. She expected to see tears of joy on Adagio’s face as she realized there was a way out of the torment her life had become. She expected to be staying up long into the night getting to know the girls; discussing their past, their present, and their hopes for the future. She expected… something.

But that wasn’t what she got. She got the opposite, in fact. No whispers, no thumps, no footsteps, just silence. As though she’d been talking to a brick wall.

Sunset took a step back and wiped the tears from her. Her brow furrowed.

Why weren’t they responding? She’d just bared her heart to them. They were supposed to respond, or acknowledge her at least! She hadn’t taken this into account when making her plan, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. She couldn’t move on without this, s-she needed this.

“Adagio… please,” her voice was weak.

Rainbow took a step forward.

“Sunset... they’re not going to bite.”

Sunset looked to the ground, attempting to hide her face from the others. The tears dripping onto her shoes betrayed her.

“We put together something for you girls,” she continued from behind her hair. “It’s a gift basket: it’s got water, bread, milk, some canned food, blankets and chocolate. Think of it as…a gesture of trust. It has my phone number in it, if you want to reach me.”

The girls waited with baited breaths, hoping, for Sunset’s sake, that something would happen.

But nobody came.

The haunting sound of rejection was obnoxiously loud.

Rainbow placed her hand on Sunset’s shoulder.

“Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“But-” she tried.

“She’s right, Sunset,” Princess Twilight nodded.

Sunset turned to her, confused. The purple princess simply offered a reassuring smile.

“You did what you came here to do. It’s down to them now.”

Sunset turned back to the door, still seeing the imprint of Adagio’s eye. Biting her lip against more forthcoming tears, the girl nodded.

Pinkie Pie took out the gift basket and placed it at the foot of their door. Moving as one, the group all turned and began to make their way back down the corridor they came. They had barely made it to the end before Sunset was crying freely.

The group supported her as they went down the stairs, out onto the road, and then all piled into Applejack’s pickup truck. Applejack returned each of the girls to their respectful homes, minus Princess Twilight, who had decided to stay the night at Sunset’s.

Only after any and all signs of the girls vanished from the corridor did the door creak open again.

The magenta eye returned, scanning the area before settling on the gift basket. When the eye owner was sure the coast was definitely clear, it snaked its yellow hand out and snatched up the basket. The door shut again mere seconds after, leaving the corridor in silence.