Sunset Shimmer looked up as Starlight Glimmer peered tentatively under the table at the currently cowering alicorn. “Why are you hiding from some chef?” Starlight asked in a hushed tone.

Sunset gave Starlight an appalled look. “He’s not ‘some chef’!” She said indignantly. “Kitchen Nightmare is a master chef!”

“Okay?” Starlight said. “Well, why are you hiding from a master chef? I mean, the royal guards I get, but a chef?”

“I’m far more terrified of Kitchen Nightmare than I am of some rando group of guards Mom sent to fetch me!”

The color drained from Starlight’s face. “Oh.” With an electric blue flash and a crackle like the air itself was being torn, Starlight teleported under the massive table to join Sunset.

“How did you remember to teleport but decided that ‘under the table’ was the best place to hide?!”

“How did you forget to teleport somewhere instead of hiding under the table?!”

“I asked you first!”

“Well, I asked you second!”

“Well, it doesn’t really matter because Kitchen Nightmare wouldn’t have any reason to be mad at you!”

Starlight thought for a moment. “Hah!” she exclaimed as had just thought of a legitimate comeback. “He might if he knew how bad the food was back at my equalized village!”

Sunset grit her teeth. “There’s no realistic way of him knowing about the food in your village out in the middle of nowhere!”

“Oh… Uh…” She looked around and frowned. “Well, there’s really no dignified way to get out from under a table.”

“Teeeeleeeeepooooooooort?” Sunset stressed, her tone still quite irritated.

“I’m still teleporting from under a table, so…”

“You could teleport out of the room and just walk in like you weren’t here in the first place.”

“Oh, yeah! Uh… We could also just both teleport and, you know… leav—”

“Found you~,” Kitchen Nightmare sang out. “I mean, you didn’t make it hard this time.”

Sunset swallowed.

“Uh, do I need to help?” Starlight asked.

“No, I got this,” Sunset assured. “Maybe… Look, if I make a bobwhite call, create a distraction and we’ll run.”

“Okay!” Starlight said. “I don’t know what sound a bobwhite makes!”

“Bobwhite,” Sunset answered.

“I know!” Starlight said. “But I don’t know what sound it calls out!”

“Bobwhite!” Sunset said in an irritable tone.

“I heard you the first, second, and third time! But what does the bird call sound like!”

“BOBWH—”

“Well don’t make me wait all day, Sunset,” Kitchen Nightmare called out. “I’ve got a kitchen to run!”

Sunset took a deep breath and crawled out from under the table. Something she remembered doing many times when she was younger, though it was easier when the table seemed so much bigger. She stood up and looked into the face of her confronter. His thin eyebrows framing his angry-appearing eyes, forehead knotted into a look of deep-seated anger… Actually no, that was his default expression.

Much to Sunset’s surprise, Kitchen Nightmare favored her with a smile. “Playing hide and seek for old time’s sake, eh?”

“Uh… Yeah, totally!” Sunset replied as she did her best to remember how behaving while not completely terrified was like.

There was another electric blue flash and the crackle that meant Starlight teleported. Not a second later, the mare pushed open the doors to the dining room and walked in with a smile that suggested she hadn’t just been hiding under the table.

“Good,” Kitchen Nightmare said. “That means you’re not too old for one of these.”

“One of wh—?” Before Sunset knew it, she was in the arms of the unicorn chef and being raised off the ground and spun. Sunset couldn’t help but laugh. It had been years since she had been spun like this. Years, many pounds, and two wings more. She thought she might have even heard Kitchen Nightmare’s back crack a bit as he did his best to spin her in her fully-grown mare glory. And like with Kibitz, a wave of emotions hit Sunset. However, Kitchen Nightmare clearly didn’t carry with him the years of regret or deep-seated loneliness from Sunset’s absence. Instead, Sunset experienced a far more welcoming and warm feeling of his simple joy in seeing her again, and immediately she felt her worries from this meeting melt away. Granted, the spinning probably would have been just as effective in that regard.

Kitchen Nightmare let out a grunt as he sat Sunset down and stretched his back a bit. This time Sunset was certain she heard the clicking of bones realigning.

“Are you okay?” Sunset asked in a concerned tone. “I mean, I might not be getting too old for that, but I might be getting too big.”

“The day I can’t pick you up is the day you better tell your mum to start planning funeral arrangements,” Kitchen Nightmare replied.

Smiling, Sunset cringed. “You better start working out, then,” Sunset said, “I might be as big as her someday.”

Kitchen Nightmare took another look at Sunset and then his eyes opened wide as if he was truly seeing her for the first time today. “Well look at you! A full alicorn princess!”

“Well… those things are technically true separately,” Sunset said with a smirk.

Kitchen Nightmare beamed widely. “I knew you had potential, lass.”

There were the tears Sunset thought had been missing from the reunion, but she managed to keep a grin on her face this time.

“Oh, come on now. None of that,” Kitchen Nightmare said as he wrapped a foreleg around Sunset and motioned to the table she had been hiding under moments ago with his free foreleg. “How about you introduce me to your pretty friend who’s clearly been sitting at the table this entire time,” he said with a wink.

“Ha haaaaaaa…” came Starlight’s nervous reply.

Sunset grinned. “Kitchen Nightmare, this is my friend Starlight Glimmer. Starlight Glimmer, this is Kitchen Nightmare, the best chef in Equestria.”

The two ponies extended their right forelegs and gave the other’s a slight tap before ‘shaking’ their legs up and down. Kitchen Nightmare smiled as he and Starlight retracted their forelegs. “Well best is certainly debatable,” he said.

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Fine. Most accomplished.”

“Hah!” Kitchen Nightmare responded. “I suppose that’s hard to argue with.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Starlight said with a congenial smile on her face which quickly turned a smidgen unsure. “Er… You haven’t heard of me, have you?”

Kitchen Nightmare frowned. “No.” He turned towards Sunset. “Should I have?”

“No, no!” Starlight said quickly. “I’m juuuust a humble friendship post-graduate student of Twilight Sparkle,” Starlight interjected quickly.

“Pretty sure that’s not a thing, but okay…” Sunset muttered under her breath.

Kitchen Nightmare’s countenance actually turned sourer. “Twilight Sparkle? Hopefully your pallet is a bit more refined than hers.” His focus turned distant for a moment as if he was briefly reliving a particularly trying event in his life. “And that you can handle cheese-heavy dishes with fewer panic attacks...” He shook his head. “I can’t even remember how long it took to convince her she could ask for more than basic sandwiches from the kitchen.” He favored Sunset with an approving smile. “While this one would pull out all the stops every time she was asked what she wanted.”

Sunset let out a laugh. “Go big or go ho-to your room.” Sunset corrected somewhat awkwardly, hoping to avoid yet another comment of ‘You are home!’ from Starlight.

Kitchen Nightmare seemingly let the awkwardness slide and simply turned to face a set of open, tall purple doors set in an ornate gold frame under a banner with Celestia, Luna, the sun, and the moon positioned as if ‘balanced’ with each-other on a two-tone colored sphere. “Alright you lot, Princess Sunset Shimmer gets anything she wants, and you pour your heart and soul into that dish and then pray that it’s good enough.”

Laughing to herself, Sunset shouted out, “It’ll probably be fine! I’ve been living mostly off fast food and frozen meals the last few years!”

Kitchen Nightmare furrowed his brow and shot Sunset a quick glare. “Well, don’t tell them that! I’m trying to motivate them! Also, are you trying to break my heart?”

“Hah! Sorry!” Sunset said. “Turns out cooking is just one thing I’m terrible at.”

“Well, it’s a bloody good thing you’re back home and have someone to make you some real food.”

“Right, home…” Sunset murmured to herself.

Studying Sunset’s face for a moment, Kitchen Nightmare opted to power on past the sudden awkwardness of the moment. “So, what can your chefs make for you today?”

With a burst of energy like a solar flare, Sunset raddled off an order, “Deconstructed-eggplant-parmesan-with-a-side-of-candied-sweet-potato-shoestring-fries-and-a-multi-berry-honey-yogurt-smoothies-with-granola-and-extra-oats-sprinkled-on-top-and-a-triple-chocolate-six-layered-cake-for-dessert!”

An ice-pick smile appeared on Kitchen Nightmare’s face. “Classic Sunset,” he said in a satisfied tone. He turned towards the kitchen and began barking orders, “You heard the princess! Start julienning sweet potatoes. Get a food processor going! Bollocks to the noble’s hors-d'oeuvres! We’ve got a real meal to create!” With that, Kitchen Nightmare disappeared into his kitchen, already a whirlwind of activity before he shut the doors behind him with a fiery orange glow of his horn.

Starlight’s forehead tightened as she looked at Sunset. “Still nervous?” she asked. “Aside from a few hiccups and cases of arson, things are going great!”

“Well, my unexpected encounters with ponies from my past have gone well enough, but I’m sure there are a few more ponies whose lives I’ve made miserable out there. You know… like my Mom’s…”

Starlight gave Sunset a confused look. “But you talked to your Mom already. You know? Back in the Crystal Empire?”

Sunset nodded. “Well, yeah… but…” She sighed. “It’s not like one emotionally charged crying fest just erases the past between us.”

“Well, you two could apologize to each other.”

Sunset blinked a couple times. “Uh… I mean… we sort of did?”

Starlight pursed her lips slightly. “And that didn’t just make everything better between you two?”

“… No?” The alicorn replied in a blustered tone. “We didn’t talk to each other for a few years, and it felt to me like she just wrote me off when I went to another dimension! It’s a bit more complicated than just saying we’re both sorry.”

Starlight frowned. “Apologizing seems to fix things for me almost all the time.”

Sunset raised a forehoof to her face and mumbled to herself something about Twilight and teaching.

Starlight cocked her head. “Oh! Maybe this is a situation where you say ‘sorry’ and then do some clean –up together? That’s worked for my bigger mess-ups!”

“Starlight, for the sake of Twilight’s snoot, could we change the subject, please?”

“Uhhh… sure,” Starlight replied in a somewhat befuddled tone. After a brief moment of thinking, she smiled slightly. “‘Classic Sunset?’”

“Like I said, ‘Go big or go to your room’, Starlight!”

Starlight smirked. “Yeah, I don’t see that catching on.”

Sunset frowned. “Yeah, it’s not very fetch is it…? Or actually, it’s pretty fetch.”

“What the heck does ‘fetch’ mean?!”

“Exactly!”

One extravagant meal later, Sunset and Starlight once again found themselves venturing down the long and lavish corridors of Canterlot Castle. Sunset strolled down the hallways with a beaming smile and a stride that might suggest she owned the place. Starlight, on the other hoof, pulled herself along with the energy of an animal that had just been hit by a tranquilizer dart.

“H-how can you eat that much and not feel like you need to pass out?!” Starlight practically demanded.

Sunset just tittered to herself. “Trust me. I got used to burning it all off pretty quickly when I was younger.”

“What, like running around the castle after each meal?”

Sunset thought for a moment. “Hmmm… more like running my mouth every waking moment.”

Starlight sucked in air through clenched teeth “Hoo-boy… I guess you are going to have more apologies to hand out before the day is done.”

Surprising Starlight, Sunset shrugged this time. “Maybe, maybe not. After some reflection while we were eating—”

“How did you have time to reflect while eating?! You were like some sort of hyper-focused machine sent from the future specifically just to consume meals with alarming speed and efficiency!”

“I do my best reflecting when eating, alright?!” Sunset countered. “The point is, I thought about it and I guess more ponies wrote my behavior off as ‘precocious’ than I imagined. So, maybe this day will go a little smoother than I thought on the way over here.”

“Oh, my darling little coooouuuusiiiin~!” A stallion’s voice warbled out from behind the mares.

One could almost see Sunset’s blood curdle inside her body. “Aaaaand that’s my punishment for jinxing it!”

The two mares paused and took note of the white unicorn stallion strolling towards them. He wore a neatly pressed black suit collar that was not attached to a suit with the front of a white buttoned-up shirt that likewise had no actual shirt to go with it. Finally, a blue bow-tie and corsage of a single white flower with green leaves completed his ‘front pieces of an outfit’ ensemble which almost made his pristine white coat look like a white tuxedo, save for the fact that yellow-and-blue rose compass cutie marks adorned his flanks. Much like Sunset, he marched with a confidence as if he owned the castle itself, his well-coiffed blond mane and tail wafting a bit behind him.

He stopped a few strides away from the mares and smiled at Sunset. If he had noticed Starlight at all, the stallion was doing an excellent job of hiding that fact.

“Blueblood,” Sunset said in a tone that was so even it had achieved true level. “It is certainly an undeniable fact that I am talking to you, now.”

Blueblood let out a little chuckle. “Classic Sunset…” he muttered to himself. “Quite, quite… Well, word spread quickly that you had returned to Canterlot, perhaps not as quickly as some of the fires you’ve already started—”

Starlight took note as Sunset’s left eye twitched ever so slightly.

“— and I knew I just had to see you.”

“Yeah… well… put on a flight-suit and hang up the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner, because you’re looking at me,” Sunset replied.

“Uh, indeed,” Blueblood said, clearly finding Sunset’s current expression unreadable. He took this moment to acknowledge Starlight by leaning forward and whispering to her, “Do you have any idea what she’s on about?”

“Beats me,” Starlight confessed. “She’s been dropping her ‘other-worldisms’ all day!”

“Hrmmm…” Blueblood replied simply. He refocused his attention to Sunset. “Look Sunset, I know you like ponies to be direct, so I’ll get to the point.”

Sunset said nothing, though Starlight noted that the alicorn tensed ever so slightly, as if bracing herself against an uncoming gust of particularly hot air.

Blueblood continued, “I know our past exchanges haven’t always been cordial, and I’ve always regretted that.”

“… Oh?” Sunset clearly taking more interest in the direction the conversation was headed.

Blueblood nodded. “Yes. And there’s something I feel I simply must get off my chest regarding those unfortunate exchanges.”

“Yes?” came Sunset’s reply, now dripping with welcome expectation.

Blueblood nodded. “I wanted to tell you… I forgive you.”

Sunset clamped her teeth together so hard and fast Starlight was convinced the alicorn had just cracked one of them. “Excuuuuuuse me?” she hissed out.

Blueblood gave Sunset a beaming smile. “I forgive you! You know… for all the horrible things you’ve said and done to me!”

“You constantly referred to me as ‘Princess Celestia’s pet orphan rat’!”

Starlight attempted to make a shocked gasp, but it got caught in her throat and died in a gurgle.

Blueblood nodded. “Correct! But only occasionally to your face!” he said happily. “The important part is you’re pardoned! I pardon you!”

Sunset’s face muscles began to twitch as if they were all attempting to leave her face at once.

“Well?” Blueblood said expectantly. “Isn’t there something you’d like to say to me?”

Starlight watched in amazement as an unnatural serene calm seemingly came over Sunset. “As a matter of fact, there is,” Sunset said.

Blueblood’s smile widened. “Yes?”

Sunset nodded. “Go PARDON yourself, L2B4!” she snapped. “Come on, Starlight, we’re going…”

“Uh… yeah!” Starlight said as Sunset stomped away from the clearly shocked Blueblood.

Blueblood swallowed as a modicum of composure returned to him. “Classic Sunset…” he muttered irritably before turning and trudging back the way he came.

Sunset and Starlight walked in silence a bit, the later a tad nervous to take the first steps out of awkwardly stewing in emotions and back into conversation. After a short while, the tension built up until Starlight practically felt like she was being scoured like a pony rubbing at an itchy scab. “L2B4? Is that, like, a Star Wars reference?”

Sunset let out a breath she seemingly had been holding for a while. “I guess I should be happy you remembered the important stuff I’ve shown you, but it’s something that predates me leaving Equestria.”

“Oh, uh… what—”

“Lucky to be born Blueblood.”

“Oh! That’s… wow…” Starlight couldn’t help but smile to herself. “That’s down-right evil…”

Sunset sighed sadly. “I know! I know! It was a bit harsh.”

“And clever!” Starlight insisted. “Very clever.”

Sunset raised an eyebrow. “Uh… Thanks? It’s probably not something you should encourage though…”

“Oh, right!” Starlight replied as if the idea had just occurred to her. “Uh… Twilight would probably sa—”

“Nope, I take it back,” Sunset said. “We’ll just leave things at ‘clever’.”

Starlight chuckled. “Yeah, sure…”

“He’s going to act like the whole exchange didn’t happen anyways next time I seem him…” Sunset shook her head. “He always does.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s go see my mom,” she said, suddenly pivoting completely around.

Starlight did a double take. “We… we weren’t heading to the throne room?!”

“I wasn’t ready!” Sunset shouted back. “I’m ready now!”

“You were taking us in the complete opposite direction!”

“I WASN’T READY!”

Author's Notes:

Okay, I got a little more story in than expecting before they got to Celestia...