“Girls, really, it's okay.” Sunset laughed from the back of the car. “You don’t have to do ‘make-up’ days for the holiday sleepovers we missed! It’s fine!”

“No can do Sunset!” Pinkie beamed from the passenger seat, holding up a dedicated ‘party schedule’ for Sunset to see. “As you can see I’ve already booked everything all nice and neatly! We’re going to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day together, then we’re going to spend every day up until school starts again spending as much time as possible together!”

“It’s our way of both making amends, and getting our ‘new’ friendship off on the right foot.” Applejack said from the driver's seat. “All of us agreed to it, and while we won’t force you to go to them if you really don’t want to, we want to show ya how much we care. So it’d mean a lot to us if you say you’d come Sunset.”

“Personally, I think it’s a lovely idea.” Twilight spoke up from next to Sunset, moving her hand over to Sunset’s, gently squeezing it. “The last week has been more than stressful for you, and I think you’ve more than earned having some fun.”

“Well…” Sunset blushed, smiling at Twilight. “If you put it like that, how can I possibly refuse?”

“That’s good! Cause we got one other surprise for you.” Applejack said with a grin, pulling her truck up into Sweet Apple Acres.

“You guys are already doing so much for me, I couldn’t possibly ask for anything more!” Sunset shook her head at that.

“Well.” Applejack said, parking the car. “You can tell us that, but try telling them that.” The farm girl let out a chuckle, before stepping out of the car.

“Tell who?” Sunset asked confused, stepping out of the car and looking out towards the house, only for her eyes to widen in surprise.

“SURPRISE!” The literal crowd of students cheered from all over Sweet Apple Acres. The fields were swarmed to the brim and Sunset swore she couldn’t see the end of the crowd. Every student at CHS had to be at the party, and Sunset wasn’t even sure what she was seeing was real.

“Wha- How did- Did you all set this up?!” Sunset asked flabbergasted at her friends.

“It’s funny what a little chain-texting can lead to!” Pinkie said with a happy giggle.

Before Sunset could really speak up in protest, she felt several hands reach out and grab her, causing her to let out a yelp in surprise before suddenly being lifted up into the air. She couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all as she was suddenly crowd surfing across all of CHS while they chanted her name in celebration.

“Ah think she’s gonna be just fine.” Applejack smirked, crossing her arms as she watched Sunset’s happy face.

“I think so too.” Twilight smiled back.

Sunset sat atop the roof of the Apple Family house, watching the students of CHS continuing to party. A lot of it had died down over the last couple of hours, and a good portion of the student body had left. The students that remained however were insistent on keeping the partying going for as long as they had energy.

To that end, it seemed that several of the students had managed to pull fireworks from… Somewhere, and were now starting to let them off into the night sky. Snow was likely to start falling in a couple of hours, but at the moment the breeze was light and the air was chilly, and Sunset couldn’t think of anywhere else she’d rather be at the moment.

She brought the warm cup of cocoa up to her lips and sipped it slowly, feeling it warm her insides in just the right ways. It hadn't been a perfect day, but she was happy enough with it.

“Hey.” Twilight’s voice spoke up, Sunset turning her head to see the girl stepping out onto the roof from the hatch. “Was wondering where I’d find you. The girls told me you just needed some time to yourself.”

“Yeah. The party was amazing but I just needed to get away for a bit.” Sunset smiled, watching Twilight sit down next to her. She turned to look back at the sky as another bright flash of colors exploded, followed by the sounds of the students cheering.

“There’s… Something I should tell you.” Twilight spoke a little hesitantly, drawing Sunset’s curious eye. Twilight let out a soft sigh before speaking up. “I told the girls about what happened with Gilda.”

“You-!” Sunset said, feeling her heart jump at that. “Twilight!? But why!?”

“Because it wasn’t right that they didn’t know.” Twilight said, looking at Sunset seriously. “And they agreed with me that something should be done about her. Rainbow Dash wanted to call the police, but Applejack said that nothing would happen unless you specifically filed the report with the police. The sooner, the better too.”

“Look… Twilight…” Sunset sighed, running a hand through her hair. “It’s over with, okay? Anon-a-Miss is gone, everyone’s happy, and Gilda’s not going to attack me again. I mean, look at all this.” Sunset waved her hand out at the partying crowd. “Just yesterday they were at each other’s throats, and today they’re celebrating. Can’t we just call that a victory and move on?”

Twilight frowned at that, not exactly happy with Sunset’s line of reasoning. Sunset looked at her best friend for a moment, before sighing.

“I’ll think about it Twilight. Really. I will. I just… I want this all to be over.” Sunset looked sadly out at the crowd. “Resentment is a hard thing to break. And I’ve finally just started to break through it, I don’t want to backstep now…”

Twilight just continued to stare at Sunset, before letting out her own relented sigh, reaching her hand over to Sunset’s and grabbing hold of it, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Just… Don’t let her walk all over you again, okay?” Twilight said quietly. “We’re past all of that now. So if she does anything to you again, call the police right away. Promise?”

“I promise Twilight.” Sunset said with a smile to her friend. “I won’t let her get away with it a second time.”

Twilight just sighed at that, figuring it was better to leave it at that than to keep fighting a losing battle.

Twilight’s hand lingered on top of Sunset’s, who glanced down at it curiously. She felt the warmth of Twilight's hand and she couldn't help but smile a little at it, before turning to look at the girl in question.

“You know…” Sunset murmured, a heat forming on her cheeks. “If you keep holding a girl’s hand, she’s gonna start getting ideas…”

Twilight couldn’t help but giggle at that.

“Well. Maybe I wouldn’t mind her getting some ideas.” Twilight said back, a playful edge to her voice.

“Oh yeah?” Sunset said, smiling wider as her fingers moved up and around Twilight’s, finding themselves laced together. “You know what they say right? If you play with fire, you’re going to get burned.”

“Only if you don’t follow safety procedures.” Twilight grinned back, a soft blush forming on her cheeks too. “There’s plenty of ways to play with fire safely.”

“Sweet Celestia you are such a dork.” Sunset laughed, enamored by this nerd of a horse sitting next to her.

“You would know,” Twilight teased back, grinning just as widely as Sunset.

“Yeah, yeah I would.” Sunset smiled, leaning in towards Twilight happily. “But the best part about fire? Is sharing its warmth with others.”

“I think I’d like that a lot.” Twilight leaned in as well, smiling happily, a hot flush to her own cheeks.

Sunset didn’t say another word, just leaning in and closing her eyes as she pressed her lips against Twilight’s. And Twilight, for her part, leaned in and pressed back. A gentle warmth radiated between the two, christened by the glow of the fireworks.

The two pulled back for a moment, just taking a moment to embrace the warmth of their bond.

“I’m really glad you’re here Twilight…” Sunset spoke softly.

“There’s no place I’d rather be…” She returned warmly.

The two leaned against each other and enjoyed the rest of the celebration together.

Now it was a perfect day.

I gotta say, I was hoping for a positive response to this story, and the response has been overwhelming with how positive it was! I'm really glad that people enjoyed my take on the Anon-a-Miss genre, it warms my heart reading every single comment and seeing the story in the top featured slot for so long!

I know the story didn't always go in the direction people expected either, but that was kind of the point in the end. To not only humanize the Humane 5 and the CMC, but also just making Sunset not instantly devolve into angst and hatred for everything that happened. I wanted to make it a redemption story on both ends, with Sunset properly apologizing for all her years of bullying, and the girls properly apologizing for not trusting her at first.

My focus was pretty much on taking all the main tropes about Anon-a-Miss I either saw, or didn't like, and play with them in a way that's different from what you expected. It's something I really enjoy doing with stories, taking well trod genres and then flipping them on their head in unique ways. I'm not always successful at it, but I'm glad that it paid off here!

I've definitely gotten the impression that most of the people who write Anon-a-Miss fics are writing them out of some kind of catharsis. Not everyone obviously, but with how raw and visceral the emotions get, I definitely get that impression. Either they've been in Sunset's situation, or a similar situation, and they're expressing what they've been through in writing.

And like, I do get that, really I do. Because while I was never kicked out of a friend group for doing something wrong that I didn't do, I have seen it happen repeatedly, and an old friend group of mine broke apart because of stupid drama similar to it.

But at the end of the day, the situation Sunset finds herself in, of losing her friends to a lie and her friends abandoning her, isn't based on them just being jerks out of nowhere. It's that Sunset was a bully for a long time before Princess Twilight stopped her. And that's a perspective I doubt many people have had. There's so much focus on the part where Sunset was hurt, and not enough on the fact that she hurt those same people just as much, if not more so. The focus is always on punishing the people who hurt Sunset, and almost never on balancing the situation, and making it fair on everyone who was hurt.

And while there's nothing wrong with that, it does make for a worn out genre at the end of the day. And I do believe that's why people enjoyed this fic for the same reasons I enjoyed writing it. To not let those negative emotions consume and control you, to let yourself move on to the better parts of your life.

If you're in a tough situation, or if you've lost your friends before, just know that things will always get better eventually. You just have to take that first step to improving things, and once you look back, you'll realize just how far you've actually come.

At the time of writing this, I really don't have any kind of continuation plans for this fic. I'd have to diverge pretty far from canon to start writing more, and I kind of wanted this to sort of both slip in with canon as normal, but also be just different enough to have a unique flavor of its own. After all, right after this would be Friendship Games, and the only real difference between normal Friendship Games and it taking place in this AU would be some more romantic overtones over not being able to reach Twilight.

How will Sunset and Twilight overcome the differences of living a dimension apart?

Shrug pony

That wasn't really the focus of the fic, so by all means, theorize amongst yourselves on how they handle that!

At the end of the day, I'm really happy so many people enjoyed this fic. And if you didn't enjoy it but made it this far, then thank you for giving it a shot anyway! I know not every story can make every reader happy, but as long as I've made as many readers happy as possible, then I'm satisfied!

I do have another story in planning now which hopefully you'll see in the next few weeks. And I'm still hoping to finish Silent Ponyville 4 before the end of this year. So thank you everyone who has helped me on this amazing journey, I couldn't do any of it without you!