Crystal Preparatory Academy was seen as one of the most prestigious schools in the state. Some would even claim the entire country, or even the world! A school where the best and brightest were challenged, provided they were willing to work hard and their parents could afford it. There, the students faced some of the toughest classes when it came to math, science, physical education, and the fine arts. Many of the graduates would go on to be massive successes in the professions they chose to pursue, be it acting, engineering, politics, or anything in between.

A small number of them had psychotic breaks and spiraled into depression, but such was the cost of success.

In light of recent events, it has become clear that there is one place, however, where Crystal Prep does fall short: socialization. Not only was it the best school, but the most competitive. Every student is taught not to rely on the others, but to see them as competition, someone who will take them out to improve their own standing. In the extremely rare case of a group project, team members would try to figure out how much to share and how much to keep to themselves, also while trying to undermine the other teams. It was not just enough to be the best, or even the best of the best, but the number one absolute best of the entire school, which was the best of all schools.

This eventually culminated in, during what was supposed to be a friendly inter-school competition (it was even called "The Friendship Game), the previously mentioned event of Twilight "Sci-Twi" Sparkle's magical transformation and attempted destruction of the dimension in an attempt to understand and control the magic of the other world.

After Dean Cadance took over due to the principal resigning, she and others had been attempting to rectify the issue, and encourage the students to see each others as friends whom they could trust. Large changes take time, however, and while some progress had been made, there was still much tension and distance among the student body.

This is what led to five of the students being there on a Saturday.

Having students on campus during off-hours or over the weekend was not unusual. There were clubs, personal projects to spend time on, and Crystal Prep had dormitories for students whose home were too far for them to commute every day, be it a few hours, or an entire other state. The students were still teenagers, however, and many enjoyed doing typical teenage things in their free time. As such, rendering them unable to do such was still a viable punishment, hopefully dissuading the student from repeating whatever activity got them in trouble in the first place. Additionally, even if a student had planned on staying on campus for one reason or another, the removal of a choice in the matter could still be frustrating. Thus, being forced to stay on -- or come to -- campus on a Saturday was still a way to deal with negative student behavior.

That, however, was not all that the five of them were doing. Indigo Zap, Lemon Zest, Sour Sweet, Sugarcoat, and Sunny Flare were the top five students at Crystal Prep, academically and athletically. They had even been at The Friendship Games during Twilight's "incident," and -- as much as they hate to admit it -- were even participants in pressuring her to unleash the magic. Although, when things did go bad, they stayed to try and help, and once it was all over, they all admitted to their role and apologized to Twilight.

Since then, the five of them had become friends... sort of...

The group had spent time together, and started talking to each other. Their conversations were always a little guarded, though, none wanting to accidentally give one of the others information that can be used against them at a later time. Most of them also kept notes on the others, gathering anything that may be useful should one of their "friends" turned against them. The only exception was when they were working together to accomplish something.

Although "conspiring" would be more accurate. It turned out that they were quite good when it came to scheming and plotting together.

This was why the five of them were at school on a Saturday, pulling up and replacing burnt linoleum. Each of them was dressed in protective white coveralls, goggles, and face mask, with the ones that needed to either having their hair pulled back, or pinned-up and covered. With large, flat, metal scrapers, they pried the old, damaged tiles before putting down the new ones. No rushing, and they had to make sure the tiles were properly lined up, or else they would have to pry up them right back up once again.

"Uuuuaaaaagh!" Indigo Zap groaned out, tossing down the scraper. Grabbing the safety goggles, she lifted them up until they rested over the sports goggles she was still wearing. She then pulled down her face mask, taking a deep breath.

"This is stupid!" she grumbled crossing her arms.

"Oh, Indigo," Sour Sweet said in an overly-sweet tone with a smile on her face.

The smile then turned into a scowl.

"Of course it's stupid," she growled out. "That's the whole point of it being punishment."

"Now, Indigo," Sunny Flare spoke up, "keep in mind that our being here is largely because of you and Lemon Zest."

Lemon Zest was oblivious to the gazes that were turned to her as she continued to scrape up tile, head bobbing in time to the music on her headphones.

"First," Indigo retorted, "it may have been our idea, but all of you went along with it."

"Which is why we are all here doing it instead of just you two," Sugarcoat pointed out.

"And second," Indigo continued, "in Lemon's defense, how was she supposed to know that the acid was flammable? There was no warning sign on the container or anything."

"Oh, of course," Sour Sweet cooed. "Who would think to keep acid away from open flame without a warning label." Her eyes, narrowed.

"Oh, I don't know," she growled. "Maybe everyone with the smallest bit of common sense?"

"Just like everyone with common sense knows not to use a drill through a live electrical wire?" Indigo retorted, raising an eyebrow.

Sour Sweet glared at Indigo Zap for a long moment before huffing and turning away. She grumbled something that was both anatomically impossible and would be quite painful that Indigo could do with a cactus, but dropped the subject. Indigo smirked, taking that as a sign of her victory.

Putting her own scraper down, Sugarcoat stood up, pulling off her own mask and goggles.

"I need a break and don't feel like listening to this argument again," she stated. "I'm going to take a break and getting something to drink."

Sour, Sunny, and Indigo all turned to look at Sugarcoat.

"Yes, I'll bring everyone else drinks as well."

There was a small round of cheers.

"Have I told you lately how wonderful you are?" Sour Sweet asked in a sweet tone.

Sugarcoat turned to Sour, raising an eyebrow. The seconds stretched as she stood there.

"What?" Sour finally asked.

"Just waiting for the biting angry part of your comment," Sugarcoat answered.

"Just go get the drinks already!"

"Like that," Sugarcoat said, turning away and heading to the vending machines.

Here could be found one of the features currently unique to Crystal Prep. One of the previous students who had gone on to become an engineer had come up with an idea: "Quiz-Vendors." Instead of paying money for drinks and snacks -- which was still an option, as there were regular vending machines -- students could answer questions about math, science, history, literature, languages, and the arts to earn points, which could then be redeemed for the desired items. Additionally, the machines were linked in to the school's network, and allowed students to store up additional credits for later use. It had even become a point of competition among the students to see how many points could be collected.

There was also a competition to see who could hack the system, but no one had admitted to being able yet.

While not in the top group, Sugarcoat did have quite a credit to her account. Enough that she could have six snacks and three drinks a day every school day until graduation, with more than enough to spare. As such, getting five drinks was not an issue for her.

Alicorn-cola for her and Lemon Zest, Diet Alicorn for Sunny, Wonderade for Indigo, and honey-sweetened lemonade for Sour.

Maybe she should have brought one of the others with her. Picking up and carrying the five bottles was kind of awkward.

As she made her way back, the sight of another student caught her attention. At first, she was going to just walk past, but something about them caused Sugarcoat to stop, turning to get a better look.

The other student was a female, and dressed in the basic Crystal Prep uniform: a white blouse, dark red blazer, with matching skirt and cross-over tie, white knee-socks, and black Mary Jane shoes. She had golden colored skin, red and gold hair, and a pair of black rimmed glasses over cyan colored eyes.

Deciding she needed another opinion, Sugarcoat continued back to her friends.

Her arrival was met by a cheer from Lemon Zest, who had come out of her own little rock and roll world at some point. Grabbing a bottle of Alicorn-cola, she popped it open and chugged down half of it. The rest of the girls came up to grab their own, moving at a more casual pace.

"Sugarcoat?" Sunny Flare asked as she grabbed her Diet Alicorn. "Is something the matter, dear?"

"Yes," Sugarcoat answered. "Either I'm hallucinating, or something strange is going on. I just saw Sunset Shimmer in one of our uniforms."

Indigo, Sour, and Sunny all stared at Sugarcoat, processing what they just heard.

"You know," Indigo said, "if anyone else said that, I would think they were joking."

Lemon let out a loud, belch, the sound filling the air, as well as the odor of carbon dioxide mixed with stomach acid.

"Wooh," she cried out, waving a hand in front of her face to disburse the aroma. "Who's Sunset Shimmer?"

"She was the girl who stopped Twilight from destroying reality during The Friendship Games," Sour Sweet answered. "Maybe if you paid a little more attention to the world around you, you'd know that."

"But the real world suuuucks!"

"Ahem," Sunny coughed politely. "If we could please keep focused on the conversation at hand?" She then turned her attention back to Sugarcoat. "Now, are you certain it was her?"

"As can be without actually asking her," Sugarcoat replied. "I don't know any students that go here with similar skin and hair the latter of which is rather unique."

"There's only one thing to do!" declared Indigo. "We need to go look for Sunset Shimmer and find out what's going on."

"You just want an excuse to get out of work."

"Well, yeah," Indigo admitted, "but would you rather we all continued to work on the floor, or that we try to find out if you saw Sunset, and what she's doing here?"

None of them wanted to keep pulling up and replacing tile (and something something friendship or whatever), so the five of them went to investigate. Starting with where Sugarcoat had seen the possible Sunset Shimmer: the vending machines.

"Now," Indigo called out, placing her hands on her hips, "if Scooby-Doo has taught me anything..." she paused, brow furrowing "...well... it would be that most of the time, the villain is some old dude that's trying to scare people away so they could get rich somehow or other... BUT one of the things that I've learned is that normally there's a secret passageway or hidden access somewhere." She pointed at the vending machines. "And I'm betting it's behind one of these. So we just have to pull them away from the wall, and we'll find the secret passage that Sunset Shimmer used."

The other four looked from Indigo Zap to the machines and back.

"I'm not doing that."

"What a wonderful idea, getting out of work by giving ourselves hernias!"

"I could probably knock it over..."

"Indigo," Sunny Flare spoke up, "perhaps it would be better if we based our methods on investigations that were more literary and less... animated..."

"Ughhhhhhh," Indigo groaned, rolling her eyes. "Fine. What do you suggest we do, miss priss?"

Sunny let out a little hum as she moved to walk around the little space. Her hands clasped behind her back as she looked up. Her heels clicked against the floor as she did, the others giving her a moment to think.

"We aren't near the front entrance," she said aloud, "so she must be this far back for a reason." She turned to look at the machines. "There are vending machines closer to the front as well, so if she was using this, it must be because she's somewhere nearby to us." Turning, she looked around. "As far as we know, Sunset has never been here on her own before, but she's friends with Twilight. So..." she turned to the girls. "Perhaps we should check Twilight's old laboratory?"

"Sure," Indigo huffed, crossing her arms. "If you want to use 'logic' and 'reason,' instead of wondering aimlessly until we either find a clue or run into the monster."

Lemon Zest turned to Indigo, eyes narrowing.

"You just want one of those musical chase sequences, don't you?"

"No!" Indigo snapped. A blush then started to form. "I mean, I wouldn't say no to one, but I doubt it will happen anyways..."

Sunny now took the lead as the group made their way to what used to be Twilight Sparkle's lab. It was actually easy to miss if someone did not know what to look for. It was just an unassuming blue door that looked like it would lead to a closet or janitor's room. No sign, or markings. Not even any sort of fancy advanced locking systems. Just a regular key lock.

Fortunately, the five of them knew where it was and Sugarcoat even had a key.

A gasp came from the other side of the door as it started to open. It then slammed shut hard, the impact knocking Sugarcoat back until she fell, landing on her backside with a grunt.

"Occupied!" a voice called out as the door locked again.

"Let me handle this," said Sour Sweet as she moved forward. Reaching out with a hand, she gave a very light, gentle tap.

"Sunset," she said in the sweetest, nicest voice she could manage, "we would like to come in please."

Her smile turned into the scowl as she took a step forward and slammed her first against the door hard enough to echo through the entire hallway.

"So, you have until the count of five to open this door before I break it down!" she roared out.

"ONE!"

"Okay! Okay!"

There was a click as the door was unlocked. It then opened to reveal none other than Sunset Shimmer, in glasses and a Crystal Prep uniform.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"That's what we should be asking you," Lemon Zest retorted. "What are you doing here?"

Sunset turned to her, lips pressed tight as her brow furrowed.

"It's my lab," she stated. "Why wouldn't I be here?"

"...I'm calling Twilight," declared Sugarcoat.