Author's Notes:

A staggeringly stupid story done exclusively for my own amusement as it relates to a song I was listening to at the time I first wrote my idea down, like, a month ago.

Whatever, man, words. You know? Stuff. Things.

One of several issues that come with fleeing from your magical homeland through a magical mirror and getting ejected from a magical statue and ending up in another (rather less magical) world in another (considerably less magical) body is that you are liable to lose track of your birthday.

There’s all the excitement for one, and calendar incompatibility for another.

So it was understandable that Sunset, when questioned on the subject (just in the course of a perfectly casual conversation, had during a perfectly casual sleepover), could not provide an answer. Pinkie had been horrified. So horrified she’d somehow got stuck in her sleeping bag and had required the combined attentions of all others present to get free.

In Sunset’s defence, she’d had other things on her mind.

Not that this made any difference to Pinkie, to whom the idea of even missing a single birthday - even the possibility of having missed a single birthday! - was torment, and something she had to rectify as soon as possible.

And so it was that the very next day, seemingly out of thin air, Pinkie had conjured up a birthday party. This came as something of a surprise to all the other girls, least of all Sunset who found herself greeted with a cake with her face on it. Startlingly life-like, much like the balloons (also with her face on).

That had all happened. That had all been very fun. Kind of disquieting, but fun, once she’d got over just having her face everywhere and also got over the unique experience of cutting up a cake that was also her face. Also delicious.

But birthday fun hadn’t ended there. For beyond the girls, Sunset had her friend Vickers.

Well, ‘friend’. She knew the guy.

How she had Vickers was less clear. There wasn’t one distinct moment she could pinpoint as the moment he and her had met and started talking and became friends (of a sort), it was more that he’d sort of absorbed into her life somehow.

He was nice, in his own way, and on hearing that she’d had a party he’d been appalled at having missed her birthday (despite not knowing it because she herself hadn’t known it) and had insisted on making it up to her as soon as possible.

Which was why, now, she was sat in a car with him, blindfolded so that she did not know where she was going. Because it was a surprise. Apparently.

“For a lot of people this sort of thing would probably be pretty worrying,” she said, hands in her lap.

“As though I’d have anyone but a fine friend blindfolded beside me!” Vickers said, clearly going for reassuring but not quite getting there because what he’d said didn’t really fit with what she’d said. Sunset grinned anyway. Odd fish, Vickers, but he meant well.

She did wonder where he was taking her, though. By car of all things, and not a short distance given how long they’d been driving, and why he needed to take her anywhere for a surprise in the first place. It opened wide the options for what the surprise might be, which might have been another cause for concern.

It probably wouldn’t be that bad, she reasoned, and even if it was bad it would have to be catastrophic to top the bad times she’d inflicted on herself (and others) not that long ago, and she seriously doubted it could be that bad.

So, all in all, cautiously optimistic.

At length, they came to a gentle halt.

“Can I take this off now?” Sunset asked, hands going to the blindfold

“No no, not yet! Give me a second.”

There came the sounds of him leaving the car, footsteps outside, then Sunset’s door opening. She was then clumsily assisted out of the vehicle.

“Out, out, gently now,” Vickers said while Sunset went along with it.

“This is getting very strange,” she said.

Getting out of a car while blindfolded turned out to be more difficult than she might have imagined, but Sunset put this down to not having an idea of what shape the car was, really. Getting in had been just as bad. Nice to be out though. She stretched her legs and reached up above her head.

“How about now?” She asked.

“Now is okay,” Vickers said.

The blindfold was duly removed and Sunset, blinking, had a look at what secondary location she had allowed herself to be taken to.

She saw a vast swathe of non-descript wasteland, the ostentatious car that she’d apparently been driven here in (a car that looked to have escaped from perhaps thirty years ago, possibly to elude punishment for crimes against taste), Vickers smiling ear-to-ear at her and then also Twilight.

Twilight?!

“Gah!” Sunset yelped, recoiling in surprise.

“Eep!” Twilight yelped, also recoiling, also in surprise, the recoiling taking her behind Vickers where she then hid, grabbing onto him for support.

Vickers remained unmoved and unsurprised, continuing to stand exactly where and how he’d been standing before the yelping, apparently unconcerned that he was now being used as something to hide behind.

“Do you two know each other?” He asked.

One of the things that Sunset liked about Vickers was that he knew next to nothing about her life or what she’d done and had expressed no particular desire to learn about any of it, either. To some this might have seemed unfriendly, but to her she could tell it was more because he saw no benefit to learning any of it. He enjoyed her company, and that was that. This was refreshingly straightforward.

It did mean that here she would have to explain a few things though, if her reaction was to make any sense.

Then again…

Sunset squinted at the still-hiding Twilight.

Something wasn’t right. Details all wrong. The way she carried herself, the way she was standing, the glasses, that she was here when she really couldn’t have been, the way she - you know - didn’t recognise her. All the little things, all adding up.

Twilight, but not that Twilight. The Twilight that had been here to start with. The resident Twilight. Had to happen, really, just kind of a surprise for it to happen quite so soon. And like this. And here.

Strange times.

“No, no, my mistake,” Sunset said to Vickers, then switching to talking to Twilight, still cowering behind him. “Sorry, heh, just, uh, you reminded me of someone,” she said.

“Sorry…” Twilight mumbled, though why she was apologising was anyone’s guess. Cautiously, she emerged, squeaking in alarm as Vickers reached back to steer her forward more forcefully, a hand on her shoulder, mostly to keep her from going back into hiding.

“What an exciting way to start things! Anyway. Twilight, this is my very cool friend Sunset whose birthday we are here to celebrate. Sunset, this here is my lovely research partner Twilight! Say hello, Twilight,” he said.

The girl - Twilight, now confirmed - went very luminous, avoided eye-contact and mumbled something that could have been hello.

“Thought you were going to call her your lovely assistant for a minute there,” Sunset said.

“Heavens no! Twilight’s brighter than I am, if anything. Whipcrack smart,” Vickers said, giving Twilight a pat on the back and causing her to glow an even more fierce shade of red.

“Why’d you call her lovely, then?” Sunset asked.

Vickers frowned, perplexed, the answer obvious.

“Because she’s so lovely!” He said, then clapping so loudly and suddenly that both girls jumped. “Anyway, we’re getting distracted. This is about you and birthday surprises for you. So let’s get on with it!”

Waltzing over to Sunset, Vickers then took her by the shoulders - big on steering people by the shoulders, Vickers, and not big on personal space - turning her about so she was looking at the car again.

“Okay, first things first - see the car?” He asked, pointing past her to it, just in case she needed help picking out the only car for miles from all the other cars that weren’t there.

“Yeah?”

Kind of hard not to. Something with so many painted flames rather demanded attention. You didn’t put a kickin’ rad phoenix on your bonnet if you didn’t want to attract attention.

“Hold out your hand,” Vickers said.

Sunset did so, and into her hand was pressed some keys. She blinked.

“Yours. That’s yours now. That’s your car.”

This was so unexpected that her brain fizzed helplessly for a second or two, desperately attempting to process it. Once it had though she nearly dropped them out of shock.

“What - what?! No! I can’t accept that!”

“Knew you’d say that but, ah, don’t worry about it, really. Thing’s three steps above being a wreck anyway, I’m mostly just offloading it on you,” Vickers said, stepping away from her and parting his hands, the body language of someone absolving themselves of responsibility.

Sunset looked at the car. It looked to be in pristine working order to her. Gaudy, but pristine working order. If nothing else it had got them all the way out here without complaint. She looked back to Vickers.

“I can’t!” Sunset protested.

“Posh! It’d be a waste otherwise! They were going to junk it! Can you even imagine? I said no, no, I can rebuild her! Gave me something to do for a month or three. It had the bird on it, see? Flames and all. Been working on it since even before I learnt about your birthday! Saw that and thought of you right off the bat. Matches your, ah, eh-theh-stick, right?”

He never could manage that word.

Sunset looked at the car again.

“Does it?” She asked.

Surely a sun might have been a better fit?

Vickers seemed to realise this too now that she’d expressed doubts and he frowned, scratched his head.

“Well, I think so. At the least the colours match. Point is it’s yours now.”

“But-” she started, but she did not get far, Vickers wagging a finger and cutting in:

“No buts! I know you miss your motorcycle - I am sorry about that explosion, by the way - so really this is the least I could do. Part present, part recompense. Take it! I don’t want it, certainly. Not my style at all.”

Sunset didn’t really know where to take the argument from here.

She did miss the bike, and while no-one could prove that the explosions (plural) had had anything to do with Vickers he himself certainly seemed to think that he’d had something to do them and had been talking about making it up to her ever since. Still. A car seemed like a lot.

“Still not sure if I’m completely comfortable with this…” Sunset said, frowning.

“I had a feeling you’d say that but then I did it anyway! You’ll get over it,” Vickers said, this time giving Sunset a pat on the back. The all-purpose gesture for conveying moral support and generally assuring the other party that all was well.

Sunset grinned.

“I’ll get you back for this, Vicky,” she said, grinning wider when he wrinkled his nose in distaste. She knew how much that particular nickname rubbed him up the wrong way, and he knew that she knew.

“Ugh, must you call me that?”

“Yes, yes I must.”

“Um…” Twilight said, appearing at Vicker’s shoulder, wringing her hands. ”Is it time for…?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes! Now! The next part of your birthday present, uh…”

He turned about and leaned in closer to Twilight and the pair of them had a hushed, hurried conversation the details of which were too quiet for Sunset to hear, not that she was listening in anyway.

“Sorry, just checking everything was ready - back in a moment!” Vickers said, dashing off to a nearby folding table and collection of boxes that had clearly been set up ahead of time. He returned seconds later cradling something in his arms.

“So the result of most of my recent tinkering is this - ta-da!” He said, hefting up an ungainly conglomeration of piping, wiring and randomly-placed vacuum tubes, all lashed together with what looked to be duct tape and the ultimate purpose of which was made slightly clearly by the very obvious grips, stock and barrel.

“A...gun…?” Sunset ventured.

“A ray gun, specifically. I made a ray gun!” He declared proudly, adding: “I mean, Twilight and me made a ray gun.”

“_{I helped,}” Twilight nodded, but this was just background noise at this point.

Sunset stared at him, but he didn’t disappear nor did he become any more sensible. And he was still holding the same thing as before.

“...a ray gun?” She asked, just in case she was missing something.

She wasn’t.

“Yes! Has something to do with, uh, ‘luminiferous aether’, I think? Or something. Some phlebotinum stuff. Mostly I just copied what a book had in it, fiddled with some bits. Works though, works very well indeed!” Vickers said, still proud, giving the ray gun a pat.

“You made this from a book?” Sunset asked, mildly concerned. Vickers did not share these concerns.

“Yeah, there’s always lots of books. Twilight steered me straight on a few key points - quite the learning experience! She’s all over this sort of thing. But anyway, point is you get to fire it! We’ve got targets, look!”

He pointed, and Sunset saw - a little way off - a half dozen or so blocks of something she couldn’t immediately identify. A moment or two of squinting made her fairly certain that what they were blocks of was blocks of ice. She blinked. They weren’t small.

“How did you get the ice here?”

“Freeze ray. Twilight made that one, not me, so she was the one here ahead of time setting it up! Why she was here to meet us. Don’t worry about the ice, they’re just targets.”

Questions were rapidly piling up inside Sunset’s head, too quickly for her to really know which one was the one she should ask first. In a panic she grabbed (mentally) and asked the first one she got to hand, which was:

“Um, okay. Why ice?”

Could have been better, really, but there you go.

Vickers grinned.

“For spectacle! You’ll see!” He said, thrusting the ray gun into her arms where she clutched it, mostly on reflex. It was heavier than it looked.

“Um…” Was about all she managed to say as Vickers - again demonstrating a cavalier disregard for personal space - adjusted her grip and stance and got her all set up and pointing in right direction to take a shot. She allowed this to happen, the whole experience somewhat overwhelming.

“Go on, go on!” He urged, taking a few steps back.

It wasn’t that Sunset didn’t trust in his ability to make ray guns, she just didn’t particularly trust in the world’s ability to tolerate ray guns. Wincing and with great reluctance she pointed the thing in the vague direction of the left-most chunk of ice and then squeezed the trigger.

BOOM!

The sound rolled richly across the landscape in the way that only a truly massive boom can manage. It rolled and rolled away, some of it hitting the nearby hills and rolling right back again, all of it punctuated by the occasional and sporadic plick plick plick that was chunks of the former ice block raining down.

A direct hit, apparently.

Turning back to an applauding Vickers (and a Twilight with her fingers in her ears who was, again, hiding behind him), static causing her hair to stand on end, Sunset couldn’t really help but grin stupidly, which might have been just a touch to do with adrenaline.

“Okay, that was pretty fun,” she admitted.

“Keep going!”

And so she did. One BOOM became a series of BOOMS, Vickers retreated to the car to retrieve an umbrella from the boot and stand near to it the better to protect it from falling ice, Twilight was furiously taking notes and Sunset just kept going until there wasn’t any ice left, acutely aware of a mountingly strong smell of ozone.

Once out of targets she turned back to Vickers.

He’d returned the umbrella to the boot and now pulled out a thermos and poured something steamy into the lid. Even from where she was standing Sunset could feel her eyes watering. Noticing that they’d both noticed him, Vickers politely proffered the brimming lid first in Twilight’s direction (she demurred), then Sunset’s direction. Sunset politely declined.

Sunset did not know the exact ingredients of what was in that thermos, but did know that it started with at least three different varieties of coffee and went up from there. That it seemed to have no effect on Vickers was alarming.

The one time she had tried it - more out of curiosity than anything else - she hadn’t been able to sleep for most of a weekend, and hadn’t been able to taste anything for a few days longer than that.

Presumably this Twilight had had a similar learning experience. Or, perhaps, had been sensible enough in the first place to avoid it from the start, reasoning that a drink which stung the nostrils and made the eyes water was a drink best avoided.

In her darker moments, Sunset sometimes thought about seeing if she could get some for Pinkie, and picturing in her head what might happen. Hilarity, hopefully? Or something no-one would ever forget at the very least.

But no, no, not a good idea. Probably.

“This was a very strange idea for a birthday surprise,” she said, resting the (painfully angular and metal) stock of the ray gun on her hip and pointing the smoking, dangerous end up towards the sky.

“Well I wanted something memorable,” Vickers said with a shrugging, sipping his foul concoction like it wasn’t borderline-lethal.

In this Sunset felt he had succeeded.

There was something she did feel she had to ask, however:

“You’re not planning on...doing anything...bad...with this, are you?”

Horrible visions of yet-another friendship-related calamity danced through her mind. She was unsure how being open with one’s feelings, group hugs and the occasional magical rainbow would measure up against ray guns, and was equally unsure that she wanted to find out.

Fortunately for her, VIckers seemed to think the very suggestion was absurd, and let out quite the laugh on hearing it.

“Hah! Oh no, no no no. This was just for fun. To help mankind! Ahahaha. No. Just saw it in the book, thought I’d give it a shot. Something for me and Twilight to sharpen ourselves on more than anything. Then it worked, and - since your birthday came up - figured you might enjoy it. Did you enjoy it?”

“It was an experience,” Sunset said, and this was not lie - it had been an experience.

“Heh, sounds like enjoyment to me! Glad you had a good time,” Vickers said, giving Sunset a winning thumbs-up, which she returned with her non-ray gun holding hand.

“I won’t forget it,” she said.

“That’s my mark of a good time. Like I said, was aiming for memorable.”

“_{Can I take that?}” Interrupted a very quiet Twilight, pointing to the ray gun.

“Oh, I can do that, Twilight! You’ve already helped me out far more than you needed to today, you take a break,” Vickers said, moving in towards Sunset only for Twilight to beat him there, taking the thing from her and scuttling out of Vicker’s reach with it.

“I wanted to examine the components for stress,” she said, as though this was a filthy and perverse thing for her to want to do.

“Ah I see. Purely out of academic interest?” Vickers asked.

“Yes,” Twilight said.

“Alright, well, don’t let me stop you,” he said, waving her off and she retreated to the folding table and started to disembowel the ray gun immediately.

This left Vickers and Sunset.

“Lovely girl, Twilight,” he said. Then : “I am sorry for I missed your birthday.”

“It’s okay. In your defence you didn’t know when it was,” Sunset pointed out, but he just sucked in a breath.

“That’s not really a feather to put in my cap though, is it?” He asked, and he had her there.

“If you took an interest in my life you might have known ahead of time,” she said.

“True, true. Should I take an active interest in your life?” He asked.

“Do you want to?”

“Hmm. That’s a good question. You are a very cool person. Is that coolness reliant on the air of mystery you have around you on account of me not knowing anything about you? Would you be less cool if I chipped away at it? Do I want to find out? Do I want to try and get to know the real, deep Sunset Shimmer? Hmm...” He said, sidling up to her and peering at her intently.

Sunset was struck by a sudden - and hopefully, probably - irrational fear. It was obviously ridiculous and utterly ludicrous given everything she knew about Vickers, but humans were odd (she’d learnt) and she felt she had to give voice to it, just to be sure:

“This isn’t - you’re not going to say you have a huge, hidden crush on me now or anything, are you? Right?” She asked.

He looked distinctly unimpressed.

“No.”

“Good,” Sunset said, relieved, then realising that that might not have been the best way of saying things, however true it might have been. She flinched. “Not, uh, n-not, you know, ‘good’ good just, uh, well-”

“Relax, you. Take a breath. We’re good as friends, we’re good friends! Don’t think about you like that anyway. Just thought you’d like the car. ‘Cos it’s got the bird on it. And fire. Get it?”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“And because I still feel bad about the bike. So that’s that. Nothing deeper to it and no torch I’ve been carrying for you. Now that fashionable friend of yours - rawr!”

Sunset was entirely flatfooted by this bit.

How did he even know about Rarity? Sunset had probably only ever mentioned her to him once and only in passing and he’d probably only ever seen her once. At a distance. While Sunset had been with all of them and he’d just been passing by and had waved at them.

Apparently she’d made an impression.

“...what?” Sunset asked, looking at him as though he’d grown another head.

He coughed, adjusted his collar, pretended he hadn’t just made that noise.

“Likely I’m not her type. But, you know, if she needs a sewing machine fixed or anything would you mind terribly pointing her in my direction?”

“I’ll, uh, bear that in mind,” Sunset said, having next-to-no intention of doing this.

Probably for the best.

“Wonderful. See! Everyone’s having a good day. Are you having a good day, Twilight?” Vickers asked back over his shoulder and Twilight paused in what she was doing and looked up from the exposed guts of the ray gun long enough to say:

“_Yes.”

Before getting right back to it.

“How did she get here, by the way?” Sunset asked, looking over at Twilight. The only vehicle in sight was the car that she and Vickers had arrived in, and that only seated two and she’d apparently been here since before they’d arrived anyway, so clearly she hadn’t been smuggled in the boot or a non-existent backseat.

“I drove her out here before driving you out here, so she could set up, helpful soul that she is. Ooh, that reminds me - since that’s your car now, would you mind terribly giving her a lift back?” Vickers asked.

Sunset could see immediate issues with this suggestion.

“What about you?” She asked.

“Oh, don’t worry about me! I have plans of my own,” VIckers said,

“That’s terrifying.”

He pouted.

“You say that about everything I do!”

“Because most of what you do is terrifying.”

“Rot!”

“Explosions?” Sunset said, one word carrying a whole lot of meaning.

She had him there, too, which he felt was unfair. He waved a hand at her.

“Pffbt. Be like that. But yes, would you mind? Just take her back to town, she can then direct you back to hers,” he said.

“Sure thing.”

“Marvellous! That counts as formal acceptance of the gift, too, so no going back now,” he said, walking away from her before she could respond, heading over to Twilight. “Twilight! Sunset’s going to be giving you a ride back, that’s okay, yes?”

Twilight - who had been making more notes - jolted and made a mess of her page. Clearly she hadn’t seen the part where she had to get into a car with a relative stranger (albeit vouched for by Vickers) coming.

“W-what?”

“It’s her car, after all. I’ll deal with all this, you get on home - you’ve helped me out far too much today already. I’ll have to make it up to you, too! When’s your birthday?” He asked.

Twilight just gaped at him like a shocked fish.

“I’ll ask you tomorrow. But yes, off you go, go on, I’ll tidy up, go go go,” he said, shooing her away, scooping up her notebook and pressing it into her stunned hands as he gently but firmly directed her towards the car, against which Sunset was leaning.

“You sure you’re alright just being left out in the wasteland?” Sunset asked once Vickers had got Twilight sat down and strapped in.

“I’m a boy of means, don’t you worry about me,” he said.

Sunset did not doubt this. Odd fish, as said.

Giving him a handshake (he wasn’t for hugs) Sunset got into her birthday present, started it up and drove off, following the tracks left from the drive out until she got to the road, then following the signs back towards town.

Despite having a passenger the drive started in uncomfortable silence and stayed in uncomfortable silence almost until town came back into view. At that point Sunset could bear it no longer.

“So...freeze ray, huh?” She asked, by way of starting up some kind - any kind - of conversation.

Twilight just nodded, eyes in her lap. Sunset frowned. That hadn’t worked. She glanced over, trying to work out what this Twilight’s deal might be but not really getting a whole lot to work with from a glance in a car.

So she just went with something simple:

“I like your glasses,” she said.

“_{Thank you,}” Twilight said, going fiercely red yet again, what seemed to be her standard response to even the mildest of praise. Rather adorable, in a way. And what a novelty to have met two of the same person! Or pony! Either way, novel and contrasting. Sunset smiled.

This was going to be something to tell the others, that was for sure.