When an old rival of yours claims to have lost a bet with the CEO of Chuck E. Cheese’s, you tend to respond in one of three ways. A) You choose not to believe them, B) you laugh in their face, or C) both of the above.

Sunset Shimmer, when confronted with this dilemma, did not choose C so much as she repeatedly bashed the metaphorical C button at every opportunity. Over the summer, every time she and her Canterlot High friends would encounter Indigo Zap, they would ask about her personal relationship with Thomas Leverton and internally laugh at her confusion. If she did not even know the CEO’s name, or at least spend all of ten seconds properly researching her lie, it was clearly not worth their attention.

“Hey, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing!” Indigo had yelled after them. “Sugarcoat made me go to some rich people gala, I saw a guy there who liked video games, and we hit it off. And then the Friendship Games came up, and I told him, ‘We got this thing so wrapped up, they might as well build a goddamn Chuck E. Cheese’s on top of us if we lose.’”

“And you didn’t know he was the CEO when you said that?” Rainbow Dash had asked in her eternal skepticism.

“It’s a figure of speech, man! When I say ‘build a goddamn Chuck E. Cheese’s,’ who the hay thinks I actually mean it?”

Sure, the entirety of Crystal Prep had already been demolished weeks after the Friendship Games, but everyone had always assumed it was collateral damage from the Midnight Sparkle battle. But alas, arcades have a way of sneaking up on people in ways even interdimensional portals cannot, and by the end of the summer, the writing was already on the wall.

Rather than the slightly snooty, yet still architecturally impressive sight they were all used to, they instead saw a slightly larger version of the Chuck E. Cheese’s most non-alien exchange students had once seen in their childhood. All stared at the building with varying levels of confusion: most at the sheer fact that Indigo was actually right about something, Sunset at the building’s actual purpose and just what the hay a ‘Chuck E. Cheese’ had to do with mice, and Twilight and Rarity at something else entirely.

“Is it really upscale if it has to say it in red 48-point Stencil?” wondered Twilight.

“With three exclamation points?” Rarity chimed in. “Gee, they might as well make the sign explode already!”

Even as everypony stared at the building, and at Twilight’s uncanny font-detection skills, several Canterlot High students were seen walking into the Chuck E. Cheese with an excitement that betrayed the grave event that had unfolded.

“So…why did you bring us here again?” Rainbow asked, finally turning her gaze to Indigo. “Just to say ‘I was right and you were wrong?’”

“Nah,” the former Crystal Prep student replied with an unconvincing scoff. “I had to. Much as I hate the whole thing, Principal Celestia asked all of us to give each Canterlot High student 1000 free tokens before attending CHS.”

She unceremoniously dropped a staggering amount of false currency into each person’s arms before turning the other way, not even vaguely desiring to get in on the festivities of her alma mater’s destruction.

“Watch out for Sugarcoat, by the way,” she muttered behind her. “If you think I’m pissed about all this, that girl’s got enough salt to clog an artery.”

“Ooh,” Twilight called after her, “you did pay attention in sixth-period anatomy!”

Just like the wind, however, Indigo Zap was gone, leaving seven students to mourn their former enemy in the most solemn way possible.

“I call the Skee Ball machine!” Rainbow Dash screamed at the top of her lungs, rushing towards the arcade as Applejack and Pinkie cursed their loss in the game of dibs.