Her bag settled on the floor next to her chair with a thump and Sunset sank into her seat, nibbling on a breakfast burrito. It was still a Monday, and way too early to be alive, but she was more alert and feeling more put together than she had felt for a while. Even the nausea in her gut was less than it should have been, considering this was her first day back in regular classes with all of the peers who hated her. At least she’d remained caught up on all her work, finishing even the paper that was due during her last week in suspension.

Sighing, she let her mind wander back over the past week and the roller coaster of emotional ups and downs. ISS hadn’t been so terrible, all in all. Boring as watching grass grow in real time, but not awful. Vice Principal Luna had been mostly quiet, going over her own paperwork or performing administrative duties with the aid of her laptop, only stepping out to deal with disciplinary matters. Though...there had been a conversation with Luna on Friday that left Sunset wondering about the disciplinarian’s own history, and how much of it paralleled the life of the alicorn Princess who had become Nightmare Moon and then back to being a Princess.

“Here’s the last of it, Vice-Principal.” Sunset set the stack of papers on the desk in front of the woman, waiting patiently for her to sort through it and then assign her the day’s detention chore. At the moment, all she wanted to do was finish up so she could head to Twilight’s house—her weekend was full of plans with her friend, and they’d stayed up way too late more than one night during the week talking about them.

Luna perused the assignments, checking them off one at a time. “Congratulations, Miss Shimmer. You have successfully survived your two weeks of In-School Suspension without getting into further trouble, and you completed every assignment left for you.” Stern eyes regarded her. “I must admit that is a first in my career—usually students who get to this point no longer care about their schooling or their behavior. I do sincerely hope this represents a true turning point for your life, and not another of your games.”

Sunset slumped with a sigh. “I’m trying,” she replied tiredly. “I know everyone is just waiting for a return of Sunset Shimmer, Tyrannical Bitch, but I…I’m done with that. I don’t want to be that way anymore—I lost everything, everything that mattered to me because of it. Look at me—I’m an exile from my home, probably damned to spend the rest of my life like this: trapped in this stupid body without my magic, with everyone around me constantly questioning if I’m going to turn on them at any moment! I even question myself half the time!” She sat, dejected, on the nearest desk. “…I’m just trying to move forward, find some way to not hate the rest of my life here, because if I hate the next sixty or eighty years of my existence, then what was the point of the Elements giving me a second chance instead of just killing me?”

Luna observed her with a measure of concern visible in her eyes. “Miss Shimmer…believe me when I say that I understand where you are right now. It is not easy, living everyday with eyes on you from every angle, expecting you to slip up, waiting for you to falter, and then affecting a self righteous attitude when you make a mistake, like they knew all along you could not change. It is the hardest thing you will likely ever face—not the fall from a great height, but dragging yourself out of the hole.” She straightened a stack of papers. “However, I want you to also believe me when I say that it will get better, given time and distance. This is high school, and you are young yet. In a few years, you will have the opportunity to be away from people who know these halls and what transpired here, what shadows haunt you. Do not give up hope—have faith that ‘this too, shall pass.’” She paused, before adding, “And should you need a friendly ear, someone you can speak freely to, given your…unique situation, my door is always open.”

Blue-green eyes stared at the administrator in shock and her voice trembled with gratitude. “…I…thank you.”

The older woman’s lips quirked into a somewhat enigmatic smile. “Thank you, Miss Shimmer. In fact, I do not need you for detention today. Go home, and enjoy your weekend. I suspect Monday will be somewhat trying for you.”

Judging by the immediate frosty glares she received from other students filtering into the classroom, and the handful of paper balls that had already struck the back of her head in the halls, Luna’s prediction about the day was going to be spot on. It seemed like the high points of her life were now her weekends—the last two of which had solely centered around Twilight Sparkle. At least the nerdy girl was a quick study when it came to learning self-defense, even if her stamina was abysmal…and the two of them had ended up finding more common interests and hobbies in the process.

The doorbell rang just as Sunset was finishing bagging up the trash in her trashcan. Opening the door revealed a chipper looking Twilight Sparkle, dressed in jeans and a long sleeved shirt. “Come on in, Sparky. I was just going to take out the trash.” She hefted the bag and started walking towards the back of the loft as the other girl closed the front door behind her. “We’re going up to my attic to practice, anyway.”

Twilight blinked. “You have an attic?” She looked around the loft, looking for any indication that the building had access to another floor.

“Yeah. I’m not sure who designed this place, but they put things in weird places. The attic is supposed to be for storage, I guess, but I don’t own enough things to really need it.” Sunset shrugged sheepishly. “So I converted it into a space to do all kinds of things that there’s not room for down here.” Opening the door on the back wall that looked like it led to a closet revealed a dimly lit area with a set of steep stairs and another door of much more sturdy make. That door opened to reveal the back alley where a dumpster sat; Sunset tossed her trash into it and re-secured the back door, sliding the deadbolt shut. “It’s up the stairs.”

Her friend studied the stairwell and the back door for a moment, before starting up the steps after the former unicorn. “You know, its placement isn’t necessarily strange if this place was used for illegal activities at one point. At several points in Canterlot’s history, there were problems with organized crime, smuggling, and illegal substances. Your home may have once operated as a smuggler’s den or bootlegging operation. A back door in a narrow space, easily disguised to all but very spatially aware people in the main living area, stairs to an attic that the building doesn’t look like it should possess…It makes me wonder if it has any other hidden spaces.”

The redhead opened a door at the top of the stairs. “…There’s the weird attic crawlspace,” she offered. “I never could figure out why it's only accessible from up here, but I just figured this place was built by a crazy person, and that's why it was cheap.” She stepped into the attic, a large open space the length and width of the building with one tiny window facing the street. She’d already turned on the lights when she’d cleaned up earlier, and the bulbs revealed a space that had been divided into several smaller areas for various activities.

There was a drop cloth with a few easels and a drawing table in the far corner near the window, along with a whole bunch of different sized canvases in various stages of completion. Some of the art was barely discernible as more than abstract paintings or child’s drawings, but newer pieces held a higher quality. More than one had renditions of Equestrian ponies or creatures that Sunset had done from memory. It was a hobby she hadn’t indulged much in for a while—originally, it had been something to help her practice using her hands.

On the opposite corner was a simple setup for her to play music—the attic had better acoustics, and like the art, learning guitar had improved her manual dexterity by a vast margin. At present, her instruments were all on the wall downstairs, but the music stand still held open sheet music from the last song she’d learned to play.

The part of the space she had cleaned up though was closest to the stairs, a large foam gymnastics mat set up on the floor, not far away from some small sized hand weights and a battered punching bag. She’d spent more time than she wanted to admit using the mat for exercises and basic gymnastics in order to learn how her new body had worked and exactly what she could do with it. The punching bag had likewise seen use when practicing her self defense or just on days where she needed to take out her aggression somehow.

Twilight looked around, eyes taking in the space. “I see what you mean…this is amazing.” She looked at the paintings. “You did all those?”

Sunset felt her face flush in embarrassment. “…I used to. I stopped a while ago, never really got back to it.”

“You must like fantasy novels a lot. And unicorns.” Purple eyes focused in on one of the paintings. “That one is beautiful…” She pointed and Sunset winced. That particular canvas was one that she had always loved and hated, but could never quite bring herself to destroy.

The piece showed herself, much younger than she was now, showing off her magic before the Princess of the Sun. The smile on the Solar ruler’s face was filled with maternal love and pride, her horn lowered to touch the much stubbier forehead appendage of the little filly with the amber coat. It always evoked the strongest emotions in Sunset, because it was everything she’d ever dreamed of and wanted when she was small, and it was everything she’d ever been denied. “Yeah…” she managed, trying to hide how strained her voice was. It was beautiful all right—a beautiful lie. Celestia had never seen her as anything more than a bright student. “You can look at my crappy art later, Sparky. Time for you to learn to fight.”

Two arms came around her from behind in a silent hug, and Sunset found herself relaxing into it. Twilight didn’t comment, just held on for a long time, until the redhead patted her hands to signal she was alright. The shorter girl let go and smiled when Sunset turned towards her. “So what do I have to do first?”

“First? First we have to get you loosened up and stretched out. You won't always get that in a real fight, but you’ll regret it if you don’t do it while learning. I certainly did…”

Startled out of her memories by someone actually addressing her, she looked up from her desk to find Rarity. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, darling. I was just wishing you a good morning. I trust you’re doing well?” The designer offered a pleasant smile; it was nothing like the open, sunlight-breaking-apart-the-clouds smiles that Twilight sent her way, but it was still friendly. Rarity was trying to be social with her, and at least polite. She could do that much back.

“I’m…not looking forward much to today. I think people were hoping that I’d been expelled. Or arrested.” She tried a smile of her own, but it felt stiff and awkward on her face. “How are you?” People made small talk still, right? It was polite to respond with inquiries about one’s own state of being with a return interest…she thought. Talking to Twilight is so much easier!

“Oh it was dreadfully busy! I had half a dozen orders to deal with, and my parents are still on vacation for several weeks, which means I was also in charge of Sweetie—trying to make her do her homework before she and her friends go cause a disaster is near impossible! Still, I feel quite accomplished. What did you do this weekend?”

Her mind trailed back to Saturday afternoon, trying to decide how to answer the question.

Sunset opened her fridge, studying the contents. “I can’t make anything fancy, since I don’t have a real kitchen, but I can make a kick ass vegetable stir-fry, if that sounds appealing?”

An exhausted and sore Twilight spoke from the sofa, trying to recover from hours of stretching, bending, and falling. “My everything hurts… Also, how can you make stir-fry without a stove-top?”

The redhead laughed, and pulled something out of a container under the table. “With an appropriated Bunsen burner from CHS that I jury-rigged into a makeshift cook-top two years ago.”

That made the girl abandon the sofa for the area Sunset had fashioned into a ‘kitchen.’ “You dabble in engineering and inventing?” she asked excitedly.

Amber fingers picked up a knife to begin slicing the various vegetables. “I had to learn. The heat in this place goes out every winter at least once, and I got my bike in pieces from scrap yards, parts places, and the junkyard. I can’t afford to call a repairman every time something goes wrong. I did that the first time the heat went out—never again. I could repair it a dozen times over for the price that creep charged. Not to mention, he kept giving me weird looks and asking ‘where my mommy and daddy were.’” She sneered briefly, anger flaring at the memory, before forcing herself back to the subject at hand. “After that, I started doing my own little things for improvements and repairs. I’ve rewired probably half the lights here, fixed both the heater and the AC more than a few times, and I put together a few things I use for cooking. Mostly the burner and a water-boiler out of an old rice cooker. They aren’t pretty, but they function.”

Twilight grinned. “Show me? I want to see exactly what you did—maybe we can even improve on the designs!” When Sunset turned towards her, she motioned. “I love taking things apart to see how they work, and then coming up with ways to make them into other things or improve on the design. When I was seven, I took apart our microwave; Mom and Dad caught me before I could really start working out improvements, and made me promise to ask before I attacked major appliances with a screwdriver again.” She rubbed her neck sheepishly. “…That didn’t stop me from pulling apart and reassembling my brother’s phone though. He gets free data now, and I used the knowledge to build several devices that tap into cell towers to piggy back off the signal they emit.”

Blue-green eyes stared at her for a long moment, before Sunset laughed and shook her head. “…You know, it's probably a good thing I didn’t meet you until after I got knocked off my throne. I’d’ve used you for evil.” Setting a pan over her makeshift burner, Sunset started explaining what she’d done to put it together, much to the delight of the girl standing shoulder to shoulder with her.

“Oh, nothing much. Hung out at home, made dinner. Made sure that I was caught up for class.” It wasn’t a lie. She and Twilight had had a sleepover at her apartment, watched a bunch of things on Netflix that Sunset had never bothered with that Twilight recommended, and had another training session in the attic. Twilight had spent most of that being tossed repeatedly to the mat in demonstrations of techniques, but also to teach her how to fall. And she had spent Sunday evening reading ahead for several courses, so there was that—in between a barrage of messages from a glasses wearing nerd.

“Sounds terribly boring, darling. You ought to get out more. Maybe you can join us for an outing one weekend.”

“Maybe…” Sunset wasn’t sure that would be a good idea. “I’ve…been using the time to think and figure stuff out…”

Whatever else Rarity had intended to say was interrupted by the teacher and the bell. Sunset flipped through her binder until she found the set of questions and answers that’d been the weekend’s homework, setting them to the side for the inevitable hand-in. The teacher gave her a long look, before addressing the class about the day.

For her part, Sunset took absentminded notes and tried to look like she was paying more attention than she really was. The literature might've been new to her, different than Equestrian classics in theme and tone, but the concept of comprehension and vocabulary was easy. Human writing was a mixed bag to her, with some of it being incredibly fun and interesting and some of it being horrific and weird in ways that drove home the worst of the cultural differences. The hardest thing for her had been learning the different written alphabet the humans used, but she had managed that years ago.

Sunset waited for most of the people to file out at the end of class before shouldering her own bag and heading to her next class. She kept to the wall in the hallways, trying not to draw attention to herself. She made it to math with several minutes to spare, taking time once she settled into her chair to check her phone, smiling at the message waiting for her. It wasn't elaborate, but the smiley face and goofy good morning made her feel better. At least until a folded note hit her desk. Frowning, she tucked her phone away to look at the note.

-You shouldn't have come back, she-demon!-

She cringed, crumpling the paper and tossing it in a nearby trash can. Now the notes were finding her in class, and not just decorating her locker….

Once the locker door was clean—for the day—Sunset spun the combination in with quick fingers, and opened it swap out things in her bag for things she’d need for homework. As the door came open, several scraps of paper drifted down. Picking one up, she unfolded it to find a message had been left on it for her.

-Demon bitch!-

Her fist crumpled the note, that knot of shame, guilt, and anger in her chest giving a painful pulse through her limbs and making it harder to breathe. Apparently the graffiti on her locker wasn’t enough punishment to some; picking up and reading the half dozen other bits of paper showed many of the same sentiments.

-Stuck-up whore!-

-How’s it feel, being a worthless bitch everyone hates?-

-Why are you even still here? No one wants you.-

-I hate you.-

Her head bowed, she did just as she had been doing with the locker door: forced herself to read each one before she threw them away. It made her insides ache like her bones were on fire again, and she could practically feel the talons lurking under her fingertips, the leathery wings on her back. They were right about her, right to hate her, right to punish her. She deserved every ounce of ire being tossed her way, and she would endure it all.

It didn’t change the fact that in that moment, she wished desperately she was at Twilight’s house so she could hide in one of her hugs.

She sighed, now distracted and unable to pay much attention at all. All she could focus on was the note and the truth of its words; no one wanted her here. In fact, she was pretty certain the only person who really wanted her around was Twilight, and she spent her days across town at her school.

Another piece of paper bounced off her head when the teacher had her back turned, and Sunset rested her head on her arms. Luna had been right. Today sucked, and it was only second period.

So, couple of notations on this one, though they are more rambling commentary from the author than anything else.

Pouring over the material, over everything about Sunset...She strikes me as a type of "Renaissance Man" kind of individual--the person who strives to master, or at least gain competency in a broad range of skills, as well as intellectual and creative pursuits. This also lines up with one feature about the character that gets downplayed or only briefly mentioned or shown: She's an intellectual equal to both Twilights, its just that her approach to that intellectualism is different. Sunset, by her own words, prefers the "hands on" approach. She doesnt delve into memorizing tomes, or working out the theories on paper. Reading something is great for getting the idea, but someone like Sunset? She experiments. She hones her skills by doing, by seeing something done instead of reading about it.

Realizing that, I used that knowledge to apply to the question "How would sunset learn to survive and blend in the human world?" and looked at the various skills, knowledges, and behaviors she presents in the actual canon. We see her, for example, try to study magic using tech (it goes bad, but hey, she's taking some shots in the dark with only a handful of years using human tech under her belt), and in one of the shorts, she is shown beating human Twilight at chess, after she's the only one to casually get the math question right and is pretty much seeming to "study" with her friends for exams as a group activity, and not through any actual need to study. There's other commentary here and there that suggests she ends up working with the human Twilight on projects like the Selfie Sensor ("Oh! You got the Selfie Sensor working?!" and--after accidentally stepping on it--"I can fix it!") . She jolts out of the camp bed in Legend of Everfree right into a ready stance, even though she's barely conscious, suggesting she's done enough self defense training that it's a subconscious reaction. She plays guitar with a decent measure of skill, and we see her doing art in several shorts... So I thought about it, and a number of these struck me as "good ways to learn how to make hands work" and "how to learn to be a better biped." Especially given how much trouble other ponies have learning "how to human." See Princess Twilight and Starlight Glimmer. Considering them, Sunset took time and effort to not stand out, and since no one ever brings it up, she likely did it early into her stint in the human world. (Though if you pay close attention, she shares subtle tics with the other ponies in human form that the humans dont when she's agitated or upset. I gotta give the art, story, and design team on Equestria Girls mad props for the subtle stuff.)

The other thing is I took a bit of creative liberty with Sunset's loft apartment from the show, mostly because what we see of it inside does not match what it looks like outside. So i had to rework the building a bit, so she could have a bathroom, a place for heating, and still have the loft style space (which takes up almost a two story vertical space) inside a building that only looks like its two stories tall with maybe room for a low ceiling'd attic. I gave up on trying to explain the window placement, and just sort of...decided not to mention the windows too much. Anyway, with all the finagling I had to do to make it work, I decided only a madman would design a building that way, and decided it would be funny if it used to be a bootlegging place for liquor during Prohibition. (Had a friend who actually lived in an ancient rowhouse that had a secret, walled off section in the basement that we discovered, and when we got into it, found a room meant for making liquor--the old still and stuff were all still in there. They did some creative shit to hide that, so I appropriated the idea.)

Lastly, I'm aware of the quickly escalating and extreme nature of the bullying building against Sunset. There are...reasons for it. In-universe reasons that will eventually become clear. Its not just meaningless conflict generation.
Anyways, rambling over.