Sunset Shimmer sat in the small waiting area in front of Principal Celestia’s office and couldn’t help but sit bolt upright, feeling like she was in trouble. She wasn’t, of course, but muscle memory in places with lots of personal history was a funny thing, she decided.

For her wardrobe this morning, she’d deliberately picked out what she privately called the least Sunset thing I own, consisting of a grey pencil skirt that went down to her knees and a very unassuming but meticulously pressed white blouse. Her normally sprawling wealth of fiery hair was tied up into a no-nonsense ponytail.

She stood up and busied herself with looking around until her eyes inevitably fell on the photos of past Fall Formal Princesses hanging on the wall. The most recent ones, she didn’t know. Going back further though, some familiar faces popped up, juniors she’d known during her own senior year, then Twilight Sparkle, and a smile crossed her face. She didn’t turn to look, only glancing sideways at the three preceding pictures, her own. Someone had put them up again. Sunset had made it her mission in her last week before graduation to try and track down every last copy and get rid of them.

Evidently, she’d missed a few, and her fingers twitched, ready to rip them off the wall and throw them in the nearby trash bin. But she resisted the urge and turned instead to a larger frame picture of the last Friendship Games. Taking in the smiling faces of herself and her friends in their prime, she lamented the fact that the school district had canceled any further events which necessitated the construction of a one-time-use dirt bike track.

"Reminiscing, Miss Shimmer?“

Sunset jumped at the sudden voice and turned to see a gently smiling Celestia standing in the door. Blinking away the vision of Princess Celestia that had immediately popped up in front of her mind’s eye, she greeted her new boss who was wearing her usual of a light, yellow blazer and purple suit pants, a combination Sunset always felt did a grave injustice to the beauty and ethereal quality of her multi-colored hair. “I guess so. Good morning, Principal Celestia.”

“Just Celestia,” the woman replied and pulled out her keys to unlock the door to her office. “I don’t like to stand on formalities with my teachers, at least when there aren’t any students around.”

Sunset laughed sheepishly. “Well, that’s gonna take some getting used to.”

“In your own time,” Celestia chuckled as she led her former student into her office. “I also went to school here once upon a time. To come back as an educator can be a bit weird. Sorry for being late. I dropped by the mall to pick these up from the locksmith.” And with that, she took out a second set of keys similar to her own and dropped them into Sunset’s hands.

Sunset held the brand-new keys up to her eyes, all neatly labeled and held together by a simple but sturdy ring. “Ah, the keys to every room in school, the secret desire of every delinquent and even most of the mildly curious model students.”

“Indeed,” Celestia said dryly while placing two cups under the espresso machine in the corner of her office. “I recommend getting a sturdy snap hook to keep them safe. Heavy is the responsibility of carrying the General Key, forged in the fires of Mt. Doom, the key to bring them and in the darkness bind them … at least until class lets out.”

Sunset bit her lip and sat opposite Celestia as the older woman brought over two steaming coffee cups and sat them down on her desk.

“What?” Celestia asked with a smirk and a twinkle in her eye as she looked at Sunset over the rim of her cup.

“Nothing,” Sunset replied, still fighting down the urge to break into a fit of giggles. “I just never thought I’d hear you crack a joke like that.”

“I’m a high school principal, not a bridge troll, Sunset. I try to maintain a proper distance and authority in front of my students. But I have my hobbies, and even a sense of humor. … A cringy one according to my sister, but I have one.”

“Well, you could have had us fooled back in the day,” Sunset replied, taking a sip from her coffee and noting that the flavor was very rich and deep. “Thank you for giving me this opportunity.”

Celestia waved her hand. “Please, I have to thank you. When the school board suddenly decided that we had to offer another foreign language as an elective, I was at my wits’ end. You’re a godsend! I thought I’d already lost you to Crystal Prep, seeing as you did your practical semester there.”

Sunset took another drink and, seeing as she’d long ago sworn to herself never to hold anything back again from either Celestia, said: “Full disclosure, I would have jumped at the chance to teach at Crystal Prep if they’d offered me a full-time position.”

Arching an eyebrow, Celestia asked: “Why didn’t they?”

“Well, Principal Cadence wanted to, but she got vetoed by the PTA, so they gave the job to some moron who had rich enough parents to go to a much more prestigious college than me and who has got family connections that pay more in donations than just being friends with the principal’s sister-in-law.”

Celestia put down her cup, steepled her fingers together and sat up straight, momentarily slipping back into her old role as Sunset’s teacher. “I understand this would be frustrating, but maybe calling a fellow educator a ‘moron’ for having lucked into more money and better connections than you is a bit harsh?” she suggested.

Sunset took another drink and nodded. “Normally, I would agree, except for the fact that I know the moron in question. We were in the same student dorm during our semester abroad. I brought back a wealth of new experiences, a bunch of new friends I still stay in contact with and the love of a new language from that. … He brought back a case of beer.”

“Ah,” Celestia said delicately and let the matter drop. “Well, be that as it may. Crystal Prep’s loss is our gain. So, was your semester abroad the reason you decided to minor in German Literature?”

“It was. I spent some time at the University of Tübingen. I was actually more interested in their archeology department at first. But I soon became fascinated with the language itself. Weirdly enough, there’s a lot of similarities between Old High German and Old Ponish.”

“Old … Ponish …”

Sunset blushed. “Uhm, forget I brought it up.”

After rubbing her eyes for a moment, Celestia leaned forward and gave her former student a piercing look. “Sunset, when you and your friends went to school here, it was …” She fought for a moment to find the right words. “Well, it was certainly never boring. But as a teacher, someone responsible for the well-being of my little students, it was also the scariest time of my life. To have something at my school I couldn’t understand, something I couldn’t protect my students from if it went wild, something that forced you and your friends into danger to protect the school again and again, which should have been my job…”

“Celestia …”

The principal reached over and took Sunset’s hands in her own. “I need you to tell me that that part of your life is over, that there isn’t going to be rumors floating around the students of one of their teachers being a magical horse girl from another dimension.”

“Well,” Sunset mumbled in response, her mouth faster than her brain as it so often was even now, as she was also trying to come up with the right words, “technically magical pony girl from another dimension. Let’s not be specist.”

Celestia frowned, her lips drawing into a thin line.

After clearing her throat, Sunset looked Celestia straight in the eye to convey her sincerity. “You don’t have to worry.” Reaching down the front of her blouse, Sunset produced the geode crystal pendant and held it up.

She noticed Celestia going instinctively stiff and leaning back in her chair, staring at the geode rock on the filigree chain as if she was expecting it to rear up and bite her.

“We’d get incidents even into our college years from time to time,” Sunset began to explain. “But they became less and less frequent. Couple of years ago, we recovered an Equestrian artifact that was messing with the people over in Maretime Bay. We shipped it off through the portal to Princess Twilight for safekeeping, and then these stopped working.” She held up the pendant for emphasis. “It’s just a pretty rock now that I keep with me for sentimental reasons. No magical powers, no ‘ponying up’ since. We figure that was the final bit of wild magic that had crossed the portals Twilight made during the last Friendship Games, and the stones going dormant was their way of telling us: ‘Mission accomplished.’ We believe there’s no more Equestrian magic left in this world, except for what I carry innately, and that is barely enough to light a candle without a way to focus it.”

Celestia breathed in deeply, nodding a couple of times and finally said in a barely audible whisper: “Good, that’s good.”

Sunset gave her what she hoped was a reassuring smile. Her eyes lingered a moment on the pendant between her fingers, before she tucked it back away out of sight.

Before the ensuing silence had a chance to stretch into awkward territory, the door opened and an older man in a bad toupee and a brown sweater strode into the office, right past the desk, and made a beeline for the espresso machine.

“Ah, good morning, Cranky,” Celestia said with no visible sign of being rattled. “Sunset, you remember Cranky, don’t you?”

“Of course. Hello, Mr. Doodle. How have you been?”

Cranky held up one finger without even looking, drank down his entire cup with a few gulps, then placed it right back down to make himself another.

“Cranky will be your teacher advisor for the time being,” Celestia said, raising her voice slightly as to be heard over the grinding of more coffee beans. “Any questions you have until you get settled in, you can confidently direct to our Acting Vice-principal.”

“Acting Vice-principal?” Sunset asked.

Celestia nodded. “Luna is taking a sabbatical this year. Cranky has kindly agreed to fill in for her.”

“You mean you volunteered me,” Cranky cut in, taking a seat next to Sunset and placing his second cup of coffee on the desk. “And I let you rope me into it, cause it means I get to retire at the end of the school year.”

“You’re retiring?” Sunset asked, aghast.

He nodded. “You betcha, soon as I finished training my replacement, i.e. you. So don’t you bail on me halfway down the line, kid. I’ve already made a down payment on a nice, little beachfront property over in Maretime Bay.”

Yeesh, the only way that could have sounded more cliché is if you’d said Florida instead of Maretime Bay, Sunset thought privately and said aloud: “I’m glad for any guidance you have to offer, Mr. Doodle.”

Cranky gave her a piercing look with a crooked eyebrow. “No, you’re not. But that’s okay. I’m gonna drop my wisdom on you anyway, you decide what you do with it. Lesson #1. Anytime Her Highness summons you into her ivory tower, you mooch a coffee off of her. The stuff in the teachers’ lounge tastes like crap, but it gets you through the day.”

Celestia dead-panned at that. “May I remind you that I paid for a second one out of my own pocket when I ordered these,” she said, jabbing a thumb towards the espresso machine over her shoulder. “It’s not my fault you lot broke yours within a week and had to make do with the old filter coffee maker since.”

“’Ah, Celly. You’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a grunt down in the trenches with us,” he replied with a dramatic sigh. “The enemy, they’re everywhere, and they outnumber us. To hold the line against the students day after day, it wears down both troops and equipment.”

Celestia quirked an eyebrow in Sunset’s direction. “World looks quite different from the other side, doesn’t it? It’s very rewarding, but it does take a thick skin on occasion. You sure you still want to do this job?”

“Careful, it’s a trap,” Cranky whispered. “The rumors are true. She actually does have a space laser pointed at any given conversation partner’s head at all times, should they give an answer that displeases her.”

Sunset looked back and forth between the two of them. “I was about to say that I could do without the snark, but then again you were both my teachers, so you know me better than that.” Looking Celestia straight in the eye, she sat up straight and added: “Reporting for duty, ma’am.”

An actual chuckle rose in Cranky’s throat. “Careful, grasshopper. We may have taught you all the snark you know. We haven’t taught you all the snark we know.”

Sunset turned and put the palms of her hands together. Bowing in his direction, she said with an absolutely straight face: “Hai, sensei!”

And then she saw Cranky full-on guffaw, a sight she’d maybe glimpsed once or twice tops in all her years as a student here. Celestia simply smiled as the first bell of the day chimed. “I think you’ll fit right in here, Sunset. Cranky, would you please show her to her first class?”

Cranky slapped his knees and slowly stood up. “You got it, Celly. Come on, kid. Lesson #2 for when you get in there, never show fear on your first day. I swear, they can smell it on ya.”

As the two teachers made their way through the door, Celestia called out after them: “Sunset!”

“Yes?”

A smile played across the principal’s lips that once again forcefully pushed a memory of her old mentor to the front of Sunset’s mind. “Welcome back to CHS.”

Sunset smiled in return. "Thanks. It's good to be home," she said with a nod and followed Cranky out into the hallways that at once felt very nostalgic and yet brand-new at the same time.

This chapter and coming chapters available one week early on my Patreon page.

“Seriously, kid,” Cranky said as he led Sunset into the teachers’ lounge after their meeting with Celestia, “just don’t give them anything to latch onto on your first day. You’re new to them. They’ll test ya, and if you show any cracks, they won’t let you forget it for the rest of the year. I swear, they can smell fear.”

“You make it sound like I’m walking into a horde of monsters, Cranky,” Sunset replied with a raised eyebrow. “They’re our students, not our enemies.”

“They’re both, Sunset. Teens are their own worst enemies. All we can do is try to intervene in this battle with themselves and hope their better angels win the fight by the time graduation rolls around.”

Sunset paused as she picked up the relevant textbook for her first class. “That’s very … poignant. I know I was certainly at war with myself when I first came here.”

“That’s putting it mildly. You were a total bitch.”

Sunset stared at Cranky for a good few seconds. “Wow, just, not holding anything back, are you?”

He raised an eyebrow in response. “Are you gonna argue the point?” He turned to the rest of the half empty room and asked: “Anyone here in agreement that Sunset was a total bitch when she first came here?”

Ms. Harshwhinny, the math teacher, gave a “yep” from the couch while not even looking up from the paperwork she was currently going through.

Ms. Cheerilee of all people looked straight at her, smiled brightly and said: “Oh yeah, you were a total bitch, honey,” followed by Mr. Turner, the physics teacher, going “Yeah, I’d agree with that based on empirical evidence,” after shrugging his shoulders.

Sunset simply stared at them in open-mouthed shock.

“Teenagers always think they’re so much smarter than us adults,” Cranky explained with a smug grin. “We could tell the difference between the kid who put on the Good Girl Act when she enrolled and the young woman she’d grown into when she gave the commencement speech at graduation.”

Feeling her ears burning and hating the fact that that was probably showing due to her hair being tied back, Sunset sighed. “Alright, I get it. Yes, I was a bitch. I turned into a literal she-demon. Is it really alright for a teacher to say that, though?” At least my friends have the decency to tack a half-hearted ‘no offense’ onto a statement like that, she added silently in her mind.

Cranky gestured at the entirety of the room they currently stood in. “You’re not a student anymore, Sunset, and this right here is our safe space, alright? Nowadays, us teachers need to be careful about everything we say, everything needs to be PC and above reproach, whether it’s in front of a student, a parent or the barista at Starbucks. Here we can talk freely, and what is said here, stays here. Some of your students will be little shits, and it’s better you let it out here than in front of a class or a parent, got it?”

“It’s both training and stress relief,” Ms. Harshwhinny chimed in. “If you can’t take a bit of ribbing from your colleagues, you won’t survive in class for ten minutes. If you don’t let it out somewhere, your own mental health will suffer.”

Ms. Cheerilee, still smiling, picked up a large, soft pillow from the couch and showed it to Sunset. “This is great for screaming your frustrations into. You can be as loud or as obscene as you want, nobody outside is gonna hear you. I do it every lunch break.”

“Right,” Sunset said carefully, subconsciously backing away from the teacher with the wide smile on her face. “Anyway, I should get to my first class.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Cranky said and Sunset caught the fact that he gave his fellow educators a wink as he turned her around by the shoulder.

The corridors were mostly empty at this point, most students already having filed into their respective classrooms. But upon rounding a corner, Sunset nearly got the wind knocked out of her as she felt an elbow jab into her ribs. “Ooph! What the…?”

The sound of a thud drew her attention to the floor in front of her. A girl, perhaps 15 or 16, had run into her and been knocked flat on her behind. She shook her head to clear the dizziness, sending her braided ponytail swinging around her shoulders freely.

“Hey, you okay, kid?” Sunset asked, extending a hand to pull her up.

The girl looked up, and when her eyes met Sunset’s, they went as wide as saucers. Stammering a little before getting to her feet, she said: “I’m so sorry, I’m not a wraith!” Then she turned and ran the other way.

“What?” Sunset asked perplexed, but the student was long gone.

“No running in the halls!” Cranky called after her lazily, clearly not expecting to be heard by the fleeing girl.

Sunset noticed that the girl had dropped her book and picked it up. It was a World History 101 textbook. “That was weird, right?” Sunset asked as the two teachers continued on their way.

Cranky shrugged. “Weird ceased to be a concept at this school when you and your friends were students here.”

“Hm, can’t argue with that logic, I guess.”

The pair stopped in front of a classroom. Cranky simply gave his protegee a nod and a clap on the shoulder before heading off towards his own class.

Sunset took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Alright, Sunset. This is it. This is what you worked all those years for, the chance to teach these kids something and make a positive impact in their lives. Princess Celestia, Princess Twilight, please watch over me. Here we go.

Opening the door energetically, Sunset greeted her students with a bright smile. “Good morning, cla…” Before she was finished, something soft hit the top of her head before bouncing off and landing in front of her. The smile still frozen on her lips, she looked at the dry eraser lying at her feet and the chalk dust swirling in front of her nose.

Time seemed to stop as Sunset considered her options. Half the class seemed to be suppressing giggles while the other half hadn’t even looked up as she came in. Should she raise her voice and demand to know who was responsible for this? Cranky’s words played on her mind. “They’ll test ya, and if you show any cracks, they won’t let you forget it for the rest of the year. I swear, they can smell fear.”

Sunset bent down and picked up the eraser to buy herself some time as she crinkled her nose. Come on, come on, come on. Push through it. … Ah, okay. Having successfully prevented herself from sneezing, she simply went up towards the teacher’s desk as if nothing had happened.

From the corner of her eye, she could see a boy in the front row stand up, shortly followed by another boy in the seat behind him who bumped into his shoulder, grabbed a book from him and headed Sunset off before she could get to her seat. “Uhm, ah, class book.”

“Thank you, Mr. …?” Sunset said carefully as she accepted the book with Class 2-A written on the cover that contained the records of the students.

“Sprout Cloverleaf, ma’am,” he replied, and Sunset noticed him reaching behind himself where her chair was. She just caught something gleaming out of the corner of her eye, reflecting the sunlight from outside before it was gone, and the boy hastily returned to his seat while the boy he’d bumped into gave him an odd look.

She shook her head. Focus, Sunset. Don’t get rattled on your first day. But the rattling continued as her search for chalk yielded only a single piece about two centimeters long. Pinching the stub between her thumb and index finger, she wrote the words “Ms. Shimmer” on the blackboard, wincing whenever her nails made contact with it.

“Alright,” she said, addressing the class which quieted somewhat but not entirely in its whispered conversations. “My name is Sunset Shimmer. You may call me Ms. Shimmer or Ms. Sunset if you prefer. Welcome to World History 101. I believe Vice-principal Luna covered American history with you last year. This year, we’ll be looking at a more … uh, yes, question?” Sunset pointed at a girl with a stylish haircut and clothes in the back row who had raised her hand.

The girl held up her phone, set to recording Sunset realized only after the fact, and asked: “Do you have a boyfriend?”

Sunset stood there slack-jawed as the girls in the class giggled and the boys stared intently. “Not at the moment, no,” she answered without thinking before silently berating herself for not having just ignored or shut down the question as irrelevant. Thinking about how to change the subject, she picked up the class book and opened it. “Let’s just … start with attendance, shall we? Let’s see. Cloverleaf, Sprout.”

“Here.” Recognizing the name, she looked at the blonde boy who had handed her the class book. He was wearing a blue sports jacket with the CHS logo emblazoned on it which marked him as a member of one of the sports teams.

Sunset nodded and continued. “Moonbow, Izzy.” Nobody answered, and Sunset repeated: “Izzy Moonbow?” When still no answer came, she asked: “Has anybody seen Izzy today?”

“She was here during homeroom,” a boy with green hair in the first row answered.

Sunset sighed and marked the absence. Great, Day 1 and I’ve already misplaced a student apparently, she thought. “Petals, Pipp.”

“Here, here.” The stylish girl who had asked the outrageous question raised one hand while continuing to type on her phone with the other.

“Right, please put your phone down while class is in session, Ms. Petals.” She did so, only to pick it right back up the moment Sunset’s eyes returned to the class book. “Starscout, Sunny.” Without a verbal answer forthcoming and dreading another absence, Sunset looked up to see a girl wearing an overall raise her hand halfway up. Recognizing her, Sunset took the book she had brought in with her from her own desk and placed it in front of the student. “I believe this is yours.”

Sunny blushed and nodded, though her lips remained pressed together tightly.

“Storm, Zipp.”

“Yo!” A lanky girl with a multi-colored pixie haircut and wearing the same team jacket as Sprout sprawled across her desk towards the center back of the class answered.

“And finally Trailblazer, Hitch,” Sunset continued, noting that there was a little note reading Class Rep scrawled next to his name.

“Present.” The boy with green hair in the front row sat straight upright in his navy-blue button-up shirt.

If he’s the class rep, he should have been the one to give me the class book, Sunset mused, glancing at Sprout sitting behind him. “Alright, open your textbooks to Chapter 1 – An Introduction to Medieval Europe. Read quietly and try to answer the questions at the end of the section before we go through them. … Ms. Petals, phone.”

Pipp put down her phone before turning to the page in the book like the rest of the class. Meanwhile, Sunset made her way to her desk, giving her chair a long, hard look, the odd encounter from earlier still puzzling her, but found nothing amiss with it.

Barely having sat down, there was a bang at the classroom door. “Keep reading,” she said and opened the door to check.

Outside she found a girl in a pink skirt, white blouse and a frankly obscene amount of charm bracelets tied to her wrists and hair. She was rubbing her forehead as if she’d bumped into the plaque with the classroom number written on it. “Uhm, is this World History 101?”

“Miss Moonbow, I assume? I’ll leave it at a warning for today, but please try to be punctual in the future.”

Izzy brought her face uncomfortably close to Sunset’s, crossing her eyes in the process, before booping her teacher’s nose. “You got something there, you know,” she said, showing a bit of chalk dust on her finger.

“I’m aware, thank you,” Sunset replied with a forced smile. “Please find a seat and turn to Chapter 1 in the textbook.”

“Okay,” Izzy replied with a cheerfulness that instantly disarmed Sunset.

Sunset was halfway to her desk to cross out the absence from the class book, before she turned sharply, walked to the back row and calmly picked up the phone that lay next to Pipp’s textbook, causing the student to swipe at the desk a couple times before going “huh” and looking up.

“You may pick this up after class,” Sunset said coldly and turned. She just managed to see a photo of herself with chalk dust all over her head with the caption “Wonder why she has no boyfriend. XD” and a button that read “Post Published” before the screen went black.

The second half of class was less eventful but no less torturous as Sunset went over the chapter and writing things on the blackboard with the stub of chalk. While there was no longer a way to read minds and emotions as she was once able to, she clearly saw the looks on the faces of her students that ranged from mildly disinterested to total incomprehension of the subject matter. The only sign of life from the class came when the bell cut her off mid-sentence, sending students scrambling out of their seats. When the dust settled and Sunset stood alone in the classroom, she was left to wonder if anyone had heard her instruction, shouted over the commotion, to read Chapter 2 before the next lesson.

Moving like a zombie through the corridors, Sunset arrived back at the teachers’ lounge. Entering, she saw Cheerilee sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee who looked her up and down with a sympathetic smile. “Dry eraser on the door frame?”

Sunset simply nodded and sat heavily down on the couch next to her, staring straight ahead. From the edge of her vision, she could see a cushion being placed on the coffee table in front of her. When she looked over, Cheerilee nodded at her. Sunset looked forward and let herself fall, her face hitting the cushion with a muffled thud as a cloud of chalk dust poofed out from her hair. Her face still buried in the pillow, Sunset’s shoulders drew back as she took in an enormous breath of air.

“From the diaphragm, dear,” Cheerilee supplied helpfully while picking up her mug calmly to take a sip of her coffee. “You don’t want to blow out your vocal chords before the next lesson.”

Finally recognizing the wisdom of her elders, Sunset screamed into the fluffy void. “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!”

With apologies for the delay and thanks to my patreon supporter(s):

Gold Tier:
-Daedalus Aegle

Sunset simply stood with her eyes closed and let the warm water hit her face before letting it run down her body. A hot shower was usually something she found immensely relaxing. … This was her third shower this Saturday, and it hadn’t helped. Her shoulders still felt stiff like a board after a first week that turned out to be nothing like she had expected it to be.

Sighing, she turned off the water, stepped out of the shower and began toweling herself off, hoping Relaxation Plan B would be here soon and be more helpful.

Hearing the jingle of her cellphone, she wrapped the towel around her body and stepped out into the living section of her studio apartment where the phone was buzzing on the stand next to the sofa. Not recognizing the number, she nonetheless swiped to accept the call and put it on speaker to have her hands free for drying off her hair.

“Hey, Sparky. How’s it going?” There was a silence at the other end of the line after Sunset’s initial greeting. “Twilight, you there?”

“How’d you know it was me?” Twilight Sparkle’s voice echoed tinny from the other end. “I’ve never called you from this number.”

Sunset grinned. “Sparky, you’re the only person I know with a Greater Canterlot Area Code who still uses a landline.”

The answer was somewhat petulant. “They finally gave me my own office. Of course I’m gonna use the phone that came with it instead of adding to my cellphone charges. Unlike you, I’m still working on a student budget here.”

“And by office, I assume, you mean that converted broom closet you showed me last time I was on campus? Why are you hanging around the university on a Saturday, anyway?”

“I’ve got an important experiment for my thesis running that I need to check on periodically. This was the only time slot I could get as a post graduate student.”

“So instead of going out and having fun on the weekend, you hang around an empty lab, oscillating between writing down numbers every couple hours and total boredom in between. You must be loving this.”

“You know it!” To Sunset’s ears, Twilight sounded way too chipper for someone getting shafted like that. “It’s a really fascinating experiment, too. But enough about me. School started this week, right? I wanted to check in with you. How was your first week?”

Done with drying her hair, Sunset sighed dramatically and plopped down onto her sofa. “Awful. I had this grand idea in my head of making an instant connection with my students, but their dead eyes when I go through a lesson make me feel like I’ve walked into a zombie apocalypse.”

“Hmm,” Twilight hummed sympathetically, “history is not the easiest subject to make interesting. You know, I never understood why you went into the humanities. You’re such a good experimental scientist. I wish you’d come and gotten a degree in physics with me. We could be working on getting our doctorates together right now.”

Sunset had a momentary flash of sharing an apartment with Twilight while a cute blonde with dreams of becoming an actress moved in across the hall, bringing chaos but also romance into their lives. “Yeah, imagine. I could be in the converted broom closet next door right now,” she said wryly, deciding not to share that particular daydream. “Hard pass. Besides, the social sciences are still sciences. It works the same way.”

“How? Hard sciences have definitive answers for the questions they pose.”

“Well, so do the social sciences,” Sunset replied, frowning. “Like, take a philosophical question. Is there life after death?”

“How does that have a scientific answer?”

“Because it does! There either is life after death or there isn’t. We don’t know the answer, we don’t have the means to test either hypothesis, but there is a definitive answer. It’s like dark matter. We think it might be there, even though we can’t prove it right now. But it’s either out there somewhere or it isn’t.”

“… Huh, I’ve never thought about it like that. Still, without a way to devise experiments, it’s gotta be hard to use the Sunsetific Method.”

“The what?” There was a knock at the door, and grabbing her phone, Sunset got up to answer it. “Sparky, did you make me an adjective?”

“Sure, remember what you used to say? ‘Reading books is fine for some people, but I learn best by going out into the field and actually doing something.’ You can’t really do that with history.”

Can’t I? While mulling that over in her mind, she opened the door absent-mindedly. There stood Flash Sentry in a white shirt and skinny black tie. He opened his mouth to speak, then clapped it back shut as he let his eyes wander appreciatively across Sunset’s body which was still only covered by a bath towel.

Seeing that Sunset was on the phone, he held up his hands silently. In the right was an inexpensive, though not exactly cheap, bottle of red wine. His left held up his phone which displayed a message from Sunset earlier in the day: “EBC! U free?”

Her Plan B had arrived, Emergency Booty Call. Sunset beckoned him to come inside with a nod of her head, to which he grinned and made his way towards the kitchenette in search of a corkscrew.

“Sunset, are you still there?”

“Yes. Sorry, Sparky. My accountant just dropped in,” Sunset replied, closing the door. It wasn’t exactly a lie. Flash was indeed an accountant these days.

“You have an accountant? Also, you’re giving me guff about being in the lab on a Saturday while you’re at home doing what? Taxes?”

“Oh, Sparky. I intend to do more than just taxes today,” Sunset replied slyly while watching Flash pour two glasses. “But hey, thanks.”

“Thanks for what?”

“For the perspective. Maybe I’ve been going about this the wrong way. It’s time to put the Sunset back into science. Anyway, good luck with your experiment. Gotta go, those taxes aren’t gonna do themselves.” She hung up just in time to accept a glass of wine from Flash.

“So, rough first week, I take it?” he asked.

Sunset actually laughed out loud at that, finally feeling some of the tension leave her shoulders. “You have no idea. My first day, this one girl straight up asked me if I had a boyfriend in front of the whole class.”

Flash chuckled. “Well, what did you tell her?”

“The truth,” Sunset replied innocently. Then she clinked her glass against Flash’s and gave him a wink. “She wasn’t asking about friends with benefits, after all.”

Brought to you by my generous patreon supporter(s):

Gold Tier:
-Daedalus Aegle

When a blue Ford Fiesta pulled into the teachers’ parking lot at CHS on Monday morning, the woman driving had ditched the mousy wardrobe in favor of her customary jeans, ankle boots and an orange tank top with a print of her cutie mark on it. Picking up her leather jacket from the passenger seat, she slipped it on, rubbed her cheek against the collar and breathed in deeply. “Hm, I missed you so much. I’ll never cheat on you again,” Sunset told the article of clothing.

Opening the driver side door, Sunset was halfway out when a thought occurred to her. Ducking back in, she fished a small box out of the glove compartment with a piece of tape stuck to it that read Street Kit in Sunset’s handwriting. Shoving the box into her pocket, she left her car and made her way to the main entrance of the school, her open hair of fiery red and yellow flowing out behind her in the breeze.

Stopping momentarily at the horse statue out front, she looked it over. She still wasn’t used to the replacement they’d put up for the broken one a couple years ago. Rather than the smooth, powerful and realistic lines of the original, this one was a cubist interpretation of a rearing horse, with sharp angles and odd pieces sticking out that made it look nothing like a natural animal. Sunset hated it, but she placed a hand on the marble base and could feel the soft and faint hum of Equestrian magic from the other side. Seven years ago when she touched it, there was the roiling chaos of wild magic bursting at the seams to get out and cause havoc in a world that had no real concept of magic. Now it felt calm, peaceful, a reminder of her old home and a soft reassurance of it still being there while no longer posing a threat to her new home.

Suddenly, a bit of movement caught her eye, as if someone was leaning around the edge of the statue and staring at her. “Hello?” Sunset moved around the back of the statue and found nobody, but she could hear quick footsteps moving around the other side.

Having completed a full round, she just caught someone she thought she recognized running up to the front door of the school before vanishing into its halls. “Sunny?” Sunset shook her head and decided not to dwell on it as she made her own way inside and towards the teachers’ lounge.

“Good morning, Gladys,” she said cheerfully as she entered.

The single occupant of the room looked up from her phone and watched Sunset skip over to the counter and pour herself a cup of coffee while humming a little tune to herself. “You’re chipper for a Monday morning,” Ms. Harshwhinny observed dryly. “Did you get laid this weekend?”

Sunset spluttered and coughed her first sip back into her coffee cup, pinching her nose with her free hand as her nostrils stung and she continued to cough.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Nice. Anyone I know?”

“You know, Gladys,” Sunset said after having cleared her throat, “I’m really doing my best to adapt here. I’m calling you by your first name, and I get that this is your safe space where you can say anything, but this is where I draw the line. It wasn’t that long ago I was a student here, and I’m not ready to discuss my sex life with the woman who taught me integrals in twelfth grade. In fact, I may never be ready for that.”

Gladys simply shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said and went back to swiping on her phone.

Sunset sat down at the table next to the couch and drank her coffee in silence.

“Seriously though,” Ms. Harshwhinny said suddenly, still looking at her phone. “Are you using an app? Cause I’m not getting a lot of good hits on my profile lately. I mean, look at this one.”

Sunset stood up abruptly. “I’m gonna get to my class,” she declared, a little more forcefully than was strictly necessary. When she opened the door, she found a muscular man wearing a track suit and baseball cap coming her way. “Morning, Coach.”

“Eyup,” Big Mac replied in passing and made a beeline for the coffee maker.

It was then that Harshwhinny changed targets. “Mac, can I get your expert opinion on something? Would you look at this photo?”

“Nope,” was the last thing Sunset heard as she closed the door behind her.

Walking confidently through the halls, Sunset noted with satisfaction that her new old wardrobe turned some heads among the students who she had taught for the first time a week before. Just as she reached out to open the door to the classroom for 2-A, she stopped with a raised eyebrow. The inwards opening door was slightly ajar and she could see a shadow moving on the other side.

Observing for a bit, she lightly kicked the bottom of the door and smiled with satisfaction when she heard a mild thud followed by coughing noises from the other side.

Opening the door for real this time, she saw Sprout standing there, covered in chalk dust and with a dry eraser at his feet. “Good morning, Mr. Cloverleaf,” she said brightly. “You will clean that up after class, won’t you?”

Coughing one more time, Sprout looked at her. “I, uhm, was just … I mean yes, Ms. Shimmer,” he replied in defeat, having tried and failed to come up with an excuse on the spot, and hastily retreated to his seat.

Hitch watched him pass by and looked at Sunset with what she thought was a look of respect, holding out the class book for her.

“Thank you, Hitch,” she said simply, looked over the class and marked everyone down as present. Rather than sitting down, she leaned against the edge of her desk to start the lesson. “Alright, good morning, everyone. I’m sure you’ve eagerly devoured Chapter 2 of your textbooks, like I asked you to. So, who wants to explain to me how the feudal system works?”

The silence was deafening.

“Well, don’t all raise your hands all at once,” she observed dryly and turned towards the blackboard. Not finding any chalk this time, she heard some shuffling and a single snicker from behind her. Unperturbed, Sunset reached into her pocket and pulled out the box with her old Flanksy supplies of colored chalks and drew a triangle, subdivided into three horizontal tiers, on the blackboard. In the top triangle, she drew a small caricature of her own face winking at the students. “Let’s have the Holy Roman Empire as an example. As of today, I am the empress of this classroom.” Picking up a yellow piece of chalk, she added a little crown above her head.

Turning around, she pointed at two students in the front row. “Hitch, Sunny, front and center. Your Empress has a proposition for you.”

The two of them looked at each other dubiously, but got up from their seats to stand in front of Sunset.

“Now,” Sunset proclaimed, “imagine every desk in this classroom is a plot of farmland. And your class assignments, homework and tests are the crops. Now, all your bases belong to me right now. And while I’m sure you all would love for me to do your homework for you, I don’t want to do that. So here’s my proposal: I’ll give each of you an entire row of desks and you collect tithes for me in the form of homework and assignments.”

“What do we get out of that?” Hitch asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, for one thing you get a place to sit down while you write something and don’t have to stand up for the whole class,” Sunset replied, which elicited a chuckle from most of the class.

“Oh, I get it!” Sunny suddenly said and knocked on her desk. “This is our demesne, right? The land that directly belongs to us.”

“Right, very good,” Sunset said with an approving nod, “looks like someone read the chapter after all. The second thing you get is protection. If someone wants to mess with you or your desk, you can call me in to help. So, do we have a deal? Land and protection in return for your service and a small tithe.”

“Sure, sounds good,” Hitch said after a moment’s thought and Sunny nodded her assent as well.

“Splendid!” Sunset turned and drew little pictures of the two students into the second tier of her pyramid. “Then by divine right of my own arrogance, I hereby proclaim you, Hitch Trailblazer, the Duke of Windownia and you, Sunny Starscout, the Duchess of Aislandia. You may sit down.”

Turning back towards the class, she pointed at Sprout, sitting behind Hitch, who had raised his hand. “Ms. Shimmer, I mean, Your Majesty. You said that Hitch had to collect all the tithes from this row for you. Does that mean Hitch has to do my homework as well as his own?”

“Tch, as if,” Hitch muttered.

But Sunset simply nodded. “Right now it does.”

Hitch whipped his head around to look at his teacher. “What?”

Sprout grinned from behind Hitch and leaned back in his chair. “Cool.”

“What the heck, Ms. Shimmer?” Hitch asked in disbelief.

Sunset simply stared at him. “The whole reason I gave the entire row to you was so I wouldn’t have to deal with it myself. So the question is this: What are you gonna do with all the land you can’t work yourself?”

Hitch blinked a couple of times, and Sunset felt something warm and fuzzy inside when she saw the realization on his face as the light bulb lit up over his head. Turning around, he asked: “Sprout, how would you like being my vassal?”

“I don’t know. What do I get out of it?”

Hitch gestured towards the blackboard. “Same terms and conditions apply. I might even help you with your homework. Plus, you get to keep your chair and don’t have to stand.”

“Hm, and if someone messes with me, I get to call you and Ms. Shimmer to my aid. Alright, do I get a cool title?”

Hitch rolled his eyes and said: “Sure, I hereby name you the Count of Lower Windownia, Sprout.”

Sunset drew a picture of Sprout in the third tier of her pyramid, then turned to see how Sunny would react. Sunny looked at Zipp two desks behind her who gave her a flat stare in response. “I’m not engaging in this silliness.”

“Come on, Zipp. It’s fun, play along,” Sunny wheedled.

Zipp groaned. “Fine. But I have total autonomy at my desk and you don’t get to meddle as long as I do my homework. Also, I choose my own title. You may call me the Grand Poobah of all Dis and Dat.”

Sunny furrowed her brows and looked towards Sunset for confirmation.

Shrugging her shoulders, she began to draw Zipp’s face next to Sprout’s. “I don’t care what you call yourself as long as the homework gets done.”

“Grand Poobah it is,” Sunny said with a shake of her head.

At this point, Izzy raised her hand. “Ms. Sunset, I mean, Empress Shimmer! I’m not a part of either of the two duchies. Do I get a title?”

“Yes, you do,” Sunset confirmed. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, do you make those charm bracelets yourself?”

“Yes, I do! Would you like me to make one for you?”

Sunset chuckled. “Sure, very mercantile of you. As Empress, I get to decide which places have the right to hold a market. So, how would you like to become an Imperial City? The city of …”

“Izzyville!!!” Izzy said cheerfully.

“… Sure, Mayor Izzy of Izzyville.” Izzy’s face joined those of Sunny and Hitch in the second tier.

“Alright, all sorted out,” Sunset said, clapping her hands together and surveying her little empire. Then she pointed at the desk behind Sprout’s. “Except that. Zipp, is that your sports bag?”

Zipp looked over and then back towards Sunset. “Yeah, is there a problem with it?”

“Yeah, there’s a problem,” Sprout answered before Sunset had a chance to. “It’s on Windownian territory!”

Zipp rolled her eyes, looked past Sprout and directly at Hitch. “Yo, Hitch! You’re not using this desk. You got a problem with me parking my bag here?”

“I guess not,” the Class Rep replied.

Sunset gave Hitch a look with a raised eyebrow. “You’re really gonna give out the land I gave you for free and let someone reap its benefits, Your Grace? Remember that you still have to pay me a tithe for it.”

Hitch thought about that for a moment. “Actually, I’m gonna let you have that desk if you become the Countess of Upper Windownia and swear fealty to me.”

“What?” Sunny asked aghast. “Hitch, she’s my vassal.”

“Still am,” Zipp said with a smirk, “but now I get two titles.” Addressing Hitch again, she added: “I accept, Your Grace.” Then she pulled the chair from her new acquisition over and put up her feet.

Suppressing a smirk at how well this was going, Sunset added some lines to her diagram, one going from Sprout to Hitch, two going from Zipp to Hitch and Sunny, and one each going from Sunny, Hitch and Izzy to her own portrait.

Sunset got out her phone and began typing out a message while Sprout continued to argue. “Wait, wait, wait! You’re gonna give our land to one of them?”

“One of them?” Hitch asked in befuddlement.

“Those Aislandians! This is a Windownian desk you’re giving away. What if I want to put my bag there?”

“You should have thought of that sooner. Besides, she’s just agreed to do double the work.”

Sunset decided to let this play out and continued to type.

“Alright, that does it,” Sprout declared. Picking up his own backpack, he placed it on the desk and pushed Zipp’s dufflebag off.

“The hell, dude?” Zipp demanded. “You can’t just do that. That’s my land now.”

“No, it isn’t. I’ve got peasants, right?” He said, patting his backpack. “I’m just gonna send some of them in there and occupy the land that rightfully belongs to Windownia. So there, hah!”

Zipp turned towards Sunset who merely glanced at her over the rim of her phone. “You’re gonna say something, Your Majesty, or are you just gonna stand there?”

Sunset shrugged. “You’re not my direct vassals.” Pointing at Sunny and Hitch, she added: “These guys are. I expect them to manage the land I gave ‘em.”

In the back of the classroom something went ping, and Pipp, who had so far ignored what was happening, glanced at her phone. She sat up straight as her eyes went wide and she looked at Sunset who gave her a raised eyebrow. Slowly, a cheshire grin spread across her face and she gave her teacher a nod.

Satisfied for the moment, Sunset put her phone away and turned her attention back to the ensuing argument.

“Are you gonna do something, Sunny?” Zipp demanded. “You’re supposed to protect me.”

“I … don’t think I am,” Sunny replied thoughtfully. “He’s not attacking the land I gave you.”

“Hitch! Call him back and tell him to give back my land.”

“Hey, you’re my liege, too,” Sprout said, rounding on his friend. “And I was your vassal first. You’re supposed to be on my side.”

Hitch simply looked back and forth between the two of them, unsure of what to do.

“Alright, looks as if I’m on my own then,” Zipp declared hotly, putting her bag back on the table. “If you can raise a peasant levy, so can I. We’re gonna fight this out.”

Momentarily impressed by the correct use of the term levy by Zipp, Sunset nevertheless decided it was finally time to literally step in. “Alright, that’s enough. Landfrieden!” She declared while holding out her arms.

“What?” Sprout asked after everyone had been stunned into a momentary silence. “The hell is Landfrieden supposed to mean?”

Sunny rolled her eyes and said: “It’s German for ‘peace of the land.’ It means nobody in the Empire is allowed to go to war with each other.”

Sunset tapped her nose twice and then pointed at Sunny.

After garnering some surprised looks from her classmates, Sunny added: “Did none of you read the chapter Ms. Sunset assigned for this week?”

“Alright,” Sunset declared. “We’re gonna solve this by having a Reichstag.”

“Reichstag? Isn’t that the capitol building of Germany?” Hitch asked and earned his own baffled look from his classmates. “What? I like to read the international news.”

“You’re right, Hitch. Today it refers to the capitol building in Berlin. But back in the Middle Ages, it wasn’t a physical building, rather it was an assembly of all the nobles of the Empire to come together and submit their grievances in front of the Emperor, the Kaiser, for arbitration. And I think we’re gonna hold it in a neutral place. Mayor Izzy?”

“Yes, Your Majesty?” Izzy replied immediately, quickly hiding the bucket of popcorn Sunset could have sworn she’d pulled straight out of Pink Space behind her chair. Apparently, she’d been enjoying herself, watching the argument play out.

“Would Izzyville be so kind as to host the Reichstag?”

“Of course, we got snacks!” Izzy pulled out her lunchbox and put it on her desk.

“Alright, your Empress summons you to Izzyville. If you don’t want your case to be tried in absentia, you had better attend.”

Almost the whole class, in the cases of Zipp and Sprout grudgingly, assembled around Izzy’s desk to hear the verdict of the Empress.

“Very well, I have heard from both sides,” Sunset declared imperiously. “All of you now hear my decision. First of all, I am somewhat disappointed in the Duke of Windownia and the Duchess of Aislandia for being unable to keep peace in the lands the Empire has so graciously granted them.”

Sunny and Hitch looked a little sheepish at that.

“Then again, this is not an easy case. By law, the oath sworn between liege and vassal, if it be legitimate and in good faith, can not be unmade. So I hereby confirm the Grand Poobah of all Dis and Dat in her appointment as the Countess of Upper Windownia also.”

“Yes!” Zipp grinned and stuck her chin out at a seething Sprout.

“However,” Sunset went on to say, “in the meantime new villages have been founded in the territory established by subjects of the Count of Lower Windownia. Those are his lawful subjects who have sworn their own oath of fealty to Lower Windownia. Henceforth, these parts made arable and the villages founded are part of Lower Windownia.” Sunset realized that she had gone a little too fast on that one when she was met by blank stares. “Translation: There’s enough space on the empty desk for both of your bags.”

Most students nodded at that, but Sprout still seemed a little grumpy. “That’s your big compromise? Split the land and what, let Zipp and I both do one and a half times the work?”

Sunset gave him a blank look. “If you don’t like my ruling, I can donate your part of the land to the Church instead.”

“Who’s the Church in that example?” Izzy asked.

Sunset shrugged. “Let’s say Principal Celestia. If I’m Empress, she’s God. I only rule by her divine grace.”

Everyone chuckled at that, even Sprout in spite of himself. And that’s the cue, Sunset decided, raising her finger and pointing towards the back of the class.

“MUAWAHAHAHA!!!”

Every student suddenly jumped at the maniacal laughter emanating from behind them, and Sunset briefly thought that Pipp was very good at projecting her voice. “What the hell, Pipp!?” Zipp roared as she turned around to see her twin sister standing there. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

“Ha! Who is zis Pipp you speak of?” she replied archly in a French accent. “Non, non, non, mon amis. It is I, ze Queen of Prance, and zis land belongs to me now.” It was in this moment that the other students noticed that neither Sprout’s nor Zipp’s bag was on the contested desk, instead having been replaced by Pipp’s pink purse.

As if to accentuate the dramatic moment, the school bell rung, and every student looked up as if surprised by how quickly the lesson had gone by. “And with that,” Sunset said, “your homework assignment for next week is to think of ways to protect your Empress, i.e. me, from this dastardly foreign attack as we move from internal to foreign politics.” She twirled her finger in the air. “Reichstag adjourned!”

Unlike the week before, Sunset actually enjoyed the atmosphere as the students packed up and began to file out, chatting excitedly along the way.

“That was craaazy, when did you think of that?” Zipp was saying to her sister.

Pipp chuckled. “Ms. Sunset actually sent me a Tweet while you guys were arguing. Look.”

“No way.”

Meanwhile, Sprout was catching up with Hitch on the way out the door. “Seriously, though. You think you could help me with my homework? I figure if I’m gonna uphold the honor of Windownia, I gotta know what those crazy German words mean.”

“Sure, Sprout.”

Only when she was sure that every student had left and was well out of earshot, did Sunset permit herself to grin openly and pump her fist. “Hell yeah! Sunsetific Method rules!”

I sincerely apologize if I accidentally ended up teaching you anything about Medieval Feudalism.

Brought to you by my generous patreon supporter(s):

Gold Tier:
-Daedalus Aegle

“Sunset, over here!”

Sunset turned to see Sonata Dusk, wearing a pink and white striped shirt and jeans skirt combo, waving at her from a table in the middle of the food court. Her sister Adagio, sitting next to her wearing a purple dress suit, was also looking over at Sunset in spite of rolling her eyes at the spectacle her younger sibling was making.

Sunset smiled, paid the stall vendor for her cappuccino and made her way over to the two Sirens. “Hey, Daj. Hi, Sona,” she greeted them, taking a seat. “Hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”

“You think it could ever get boring in the Mall’s food court with this one around?” Adagio dead-panned, indicating her sister who was pushing a huge platter of nachos into the middle of the table for all of them to share.

“I hereby declare this meeting of the Reformed Villainesses Social Club open,” Sonata said brightly.

Adagio groaned. “That joke gets funnier every time we all meet up. Every. Single. Time.” Those last three words had been punctuated by clenched teeth.

Sunset chuckled. An outside eye would claim they never changed, but she’d come to know the difference between how Adagio used to be around her sisters and the actual older sister she’d become to them. “Ari couldn’t make it?”

“Nah,” Adagio replied, taking a sip from her ice coffee, “this new job keeps her moving all over the country on business trips. We barely get to see her.”

“Right, what’s she doing now? Something with sales?” Sunset asked, snacking on some of the offered nachos.

“Pharmaceutical Sales Rep,” Sonata answered, pulling up a picture on her phone to show Sunset. “Check this out.”

The grumpy expression was the same, but everything else seemed very, very different. “Wow,” Sunset muttered with a grin, “Aria Blaze wearing a grey pants suit. Now I’ve seen it all. And how are you two doing?”

Adagio shrugged. “Making a living. I had years of practice as a kindergarten teacher before turning it into a career, after all.” She nodded towards her sister. “I practically have the patience of a saint now.”

Sonata giggled. “She says that now, but you should have seen her during our first week. She was seething.”

“Well, those were my favorite pair of pants,” Adagio grumbled, “now they’re an art piece with a dozen little hand prints in finger paints all over them. I’ve learned my lesson. Only wear old clothes to work.”

“I feel that,” Sunset laughed. “I was actually sporting the Aria look my first day. It wasn’t me, and the chalk dust wasn’t helping.”

“I’ll bet,” Adagio sighed. “Still wouldn’t wanna trade with you. Teenagers are the worst. Then again, you turned us into respectable members of society, so I figure you’ve got it handled.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” Sunset said sagely while taking a sip from her beverage. “It was all you. You put the work in. Frankly, when you showed up at Canterlot U during freshmen orientation five years ago, I was convinced that you were there for some whacky revenge scheme against me and my friends.”

Sonata suddenly elbowed her sister and gave her a look. Adagio replied by furrowing her brows and pressing her lips together in a thin line. But Sonata nodded her head towards Sunset several times.

“What am I missing here?” Sunset asked.

“Come on, Daj,” Sonata said in a whisper that wasn’t a whisper. “You’ve been telling me for years that you wanted to get it off your chest.”

“You want me to do this right here, right now? Also, you never told her?”

“I promised you I wouldn’t back then,” Sonata said, closing her eyes.

“Appreciate that, sis,” Adagio said quietly. Then she looked towards the ceiling, groaned loudly and added in a monotone: “Alright, fine! We, that is I, had an evil, dastardly plan to take you down when we enrolled. There, I said it.”

Sunset simply gave her a flat stare. “I’m shocked,” she said in a voice that betrayed a shocking lack of any shock.

Adagio looked at her sister angrily while gesturing towards Sunset.

“Duh,” Sonata said flatly. “Of course she figured that much out, even back then.”

“What I never did figure out,” Sunset said while taking another sip from her drink, “is what the actual plan was and why you abandoned it. So I’m all ears if you’re finally ready to enlighten me.”

Adagio sighed. “It was dumb. You had so much magic inside you, the idea was to suck out your soul, condense it into solid form and then use that to make new Siren gems for the three of us. We would have gotten our powers back and you would probably be a vegetable in a hospital bed right now, if your body had even survived your soul being torn asunder that is.”

Sunset blinked. “Yikes,” she eventually said with a shudder, “thanks for not following through on that one, I guess.”

“I’m sure your friends would have found a way to defeat us and put you back together with a rainbow sparkle beam or something if it had ever gotten that far,” Sonata chimed in.

Sighing again, Adagio continued: “You can probably see the flaw in my ‘brilliant’ plan already. It would have required magic for us to enact it and get our magic back. We figured magical things kept happening around you girls, so some opportunity might present itself if we stuck close to you.” She rested her forehead against the palm of her hand. “But then you girls just … kept inviting us to student parties, or to join your study groups, or cook together in the dorm’s kitchen, especially the pink one.”

Sunset could feel her breath catch for a moment at that and she lowered her head slightly.

“Anyway,” Adagio went on oblivious, “the right chance never came along, and then after a couple years had passed …”

“The Maretime Bay incident,” Sunset said sadly, her eyes a million miles away.

“Right. The well of Equestrian magic in this world seemed to be well and truly dry after that.” Adagio laughed ruefully and finally managed to meet Sunset’s eyes again. “Tell you the truth, I’d already given up and accepted my fate at that point. It was just the final nail in the coffin. After a while, life without magic didn’t seem so bad, not bad enough to risk it all on some harebrained scheme anyway. Not when we were suddenly all figuring out things we were good at without magic. And even if the opportunity had ever come up and I was still willing to see it through, I couldn’t be sure anymore that everyone else was still onboard with the plan.” She looked over at her sister.

With the spotlight on her, Sonata suddenly became very interested in the tabletop immediately in front of her. “I, uhm, that is …” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “That year we were dating, after you came back from Germany? That was never part of the plan, … in case you were ever wondering.” That last part had come out in a hoarse whisper, barely audible.

Sunset was taken aback for a moment, looking over towards Adagio who quietly nodded at her to say something in response. Seeing Sonata’s trembling hand on the table, Sunset put her own hand on top of hers. “To tell you the truth, I did wonder at first,” she said softly. Then, when Sonata looked up at her tearfully, she added with a smile: “But not for long. So it makes me happy to hear you say that.”

Sonata finally smiled back and wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes.

Adagio made a gagging sound and broke the moment after a while. “Blergh! Alright, therapy session over!” she declared. “You and your friends magic-of-friendshipped us. Whoop dee doo! Now stop this saccharine sweetness before you give me diabetes, and let’s talk about something else.”

Sunset and Sonata both blushed as they realized they were still holding hands and pulled back. “Alright, Daj,” Sunset laughed, “what do you wanna talk about then?”

She shrugged. “I dunno, how about that weird girl hiding behind the trashcan who’s been watching us since you sat down?”

“What?”

“Oh yeah, I was wondering about that, too,” Sonata added while nonchalantly resuming her work on the nachos. “Maybe she’s hungry. Should we invite her over?”

Adagio simply pointed over Sunset’s shoulder.

When Sunset turned around, wide eyes stared at her. “Eeep!” The girl broke into a dead sprint, knocking over the trashcan she had been using as cover in the process while someone shouted from across the food court. “Hey, damn kids!”

“Sunny Starscout?” Sunset muttered, this time sure she recognized the fleeing backside after having seen it several times in as many weeks.

“You know her?” Adagio asked.

“Yeah, I mean, not really. She’s one of my students.”

Sonata shrugged. “Maybe she wanted to come over and say hi, but was too shy to do it,” she suggested.

Sunset remained quiet for a while before turning back to her two companions. “Yeah, probably something like that,” she said finally while the way she said it spoke volumes more.

Brought to you by my generous patreon supporter(s):

Gold Tier:
-Daedalus Aegle

“You think that’s a hairpiece or do you think anyone would voluntarily get a haircut like that?”

Sunset looked up at the phone Gladys Harshwhinny had shoved in front of her face, showing the profile picture of a potential match the almighty algorithm of her latest dating app had come up with. “That’s a lawnmower accident, is what that is,” Sunset replied and went back to the magazine she was reading.

“Hm,” Harshwhinny grumbled and turned to Cranky who had just entered the teachers’ lounge. “Cranky, expert opinion.” She held out her phone.

Cranky took a single glance, raised an eyebrow and uttered two words: “Lawnmower accident.”

“Word,” Sunset said and held out her fist which Cranky bumped on his way to the fridge.

“Fat help you two are,” Gladys complained and swiped left before retreating back to the couch where Cheerilee and Big Mac were chatting.

There was a knock at the door to the teachers’ lounge and Celestia’s voice came through from the other side. “Alright, you lot. I’m opening this door in ten seconds. Put away everything you don’t want me to see, so I can maintain my plausible deniability.”

Sunset looked around, noted none of the other teachers reacting, and gave Cranky a questioning glance.

“She always makes that joke when she comes in here,” he answered her unspoken question. “None of us have had the heart to tell her that it stopped being funny years ago. All clear, Principal!” That last part had been loud enough to be heard outside.

Celestia stepped inside and held up a sheaf of papers. “Finalized electives sign-up sheets. Get ‘em while they’re hot. Had a lot of students flip-flopping back and forth until the last minute this year.”

“Let’s have it, then,” Cranky said with little enthusiasm, taking the papers from her and bringing them over to the coffee table to spread them out. Harshwhinny, Cheerilee and Big Mac had all inched forward to the edge of their seats in anticipation.

Celestia then looked at Sunset. “Sunset, may I have a word with you?” she asked, moving her head to indicate outside.

“Uh, sure,” Sunset replied, halfway over to the others and torn between her curiosity to see and a request from a voice that commanded her respect two times over. She followed the principal outside into the empty hallway and closed the door behind her. “What’s up?”

“I got a very strange call from a parent the other day,” Celestia began. “Sunset, are you making your students call you Empress and extract oaths of obedience from them?”

“Oh, that,” Sunset chuckled lightly. “No, it’s … it was a roleplaying exercise. I was teaching them about the feudal system by having them take on the roles of nobles in a medieval society.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I know it’s not your usual history lesson, but they seemed to be really engaged. Am I … in trouble for that?” Sunset asked, growing slightly worried about Celestia’s serious expression.

Celestia gave her a stern look and then relaxed her shoulders with a sigh. “No, Sunset. I’ve been dealing with Mrs. Cloverleaf long enough to know she’s more bark than bite. But do be a little more careful with what you say in front of your students, please. When parents ask their kids about their day at school, a lot of context usually gets lost. It’s like a game of telephone.”

“Right, I’ll be more careful from now on.”

“Is there anything else you might have said that could have come across in a weird way?”

Sunset tried to recap the lesson in question as best as she could in her mind. “Uhm, I may have called you ‘God’ in the context of that little exercise?” she said sheepishly.

Celestia went white as a sheet, which was a neat trick considering her already fairly light complexion. “Don’t do that!” she nearly roared before regaining her composure. “Canterlot City isn’t all that religious in general, but it only takes one ultra-conservative housewife with more time than sense on her hands to rake me over the coals in front of the school board for a comment like that.”

“Sorry,” Sunset said with feeling, wondering if Celestia was speaking from experience to illicit that kind of reaction from her.

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Celestia sighed. “Well, it is what it is now. You’ll have enough on your plate shortly, so I’ll leave it at that,” she said and turned to leave.

Sunset turned to reenter the teachers’ lounge, but a movement caught her eye from the opposite direction that Celestia had gone in. She frowned and considered going to investigate directly. But she thought better of it. If this was who she thought it was, a direct approach would only lead to the same result as before.

After a moment, she came up with a plan of action and entered the teachers’ lounge, closing the door behind her and crossing the room with quick steps.

“Hey, Sunset …” Cranky began to call out to her.

“Sorry, hold that thought and don’t mind me,” she replied with an intent look on her face before opening the window and vaulting over the windowsill to the outside. Thankfully, the room was on the ground floor and so she landed safely on the grass outside, making her way quickly toward the front entrance along the wall.

She could just about hear Cranky sigh behind her through the open window. “And here I thought she’d at least last a semester before she started showing the signs.”

Ignoring that, she entered the school through the front entrance and crept her way slowly along the lockers back towards the teachers’ lounge. With last period over, the corridors were mostly deserted and she ran into her quarry before long. No mistaking it. She’d seen that backside one too many times lately. “Where did she go?” She could hear her target mutter to herself and lean around the corner to keep eyes on the teachers’ lounge.

“I’m right here,” Sunset said sternly and added: “And we are going to have a talk, young lady.”

The girl stood stock still for a moment, her muscles tensing and her head going down as if to break into a sprint.

“Sunny Starscout!” Sunset said, raising her voice. “If you run away from me again, you will have the dubious honor of becoming the first student I’ve ever sent to detention!”

The girl relaxed her form after a couple of tense moments of silence and stood up straight again. Finally, she turned around with a sheepish expression. “Ms. Sunset! What a surprise running into you here.”

“Is it?” Sunset asked with a raised eyebrow. “You’ve been following me around school ever since we met. And the other day at the mall? I want an explanation. Now.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sunny laughed. “Oh, was that you at the mall? I was only there because I run a smoothie stand at the food court on weekends.”

“Unless there was a smoothie stand behind that trashcan you knocked over, I’m not buying it.” Sunset sighed and walked a step closer. Forcing some softness back into her voice, she laid a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Sunny, you’re not in trouble, but I want to know what’s going on. I’m worried about you. You’re a good student in class. Why are you so skittish around me?”

Sunny looked her teacher in the eye and let out a long breath. “The truth … is that I’ve been wanting to ask you something, and I’ve been trying to find the right words to say it.”

Sunset gave her a reassuring smile. “Well, you got my attention, and we’re here. Just let it out. I promise I won’t be mad if it doesn’t come out perfectly. You’ll feel better afterwards.”

Sunny took another deep breath, balling her hands into fists at her side, and nodded. “Okay, here goes,” she said and looked back up and directly into Sunset’s eyes. “I want you to teach me magic!”

Sunset tensed and forced out a short chuckle. “You mean like, card tricks and balloon animals? I’m not very dexterous with my hands, but I’ve got a great and powerful friend who can probably teach you a trick or two.”

“No! I mean real magic,” Sunny stated, shaking her head, “like you and those other women did when you saved Maretime Bay three years ago!”

Now it was Sunset’s turn for her muscles to freeze up, and she looked around to make sure nobody else was in the vicinity before grabbing Sunny’s arm and dragging her into an empty classroom. She closed the door and held it shut, trying not to hyperventilate.

“Ms. Sunset? Are you okay?” There was an element of concern in the young girl’s voice.

“Sunny,” Sunset began, failing horribly to keep the panic out of her voice. “You know that magic isn’t real, right?”

Sunny simply gave her an odd look. “But it is, and I know you know it, too. I saw it firsthand in Maretime Bay.”

“No, Sunny! You didn’t!” Grabbing Sunny by the shoulders, she said: “Three years ago, there was some kind of atmospheric disturbance over Maretime Bay, coupled with a minor earthquake, the vibrations of which caused some visual and auditory hallucinations for some people. That’s what they said on the news back then.”

Shaking her head, Sunny replied: “But the news was wrong. I was there! I saw it! I saw one of your friends lift a truck with one hand, and another conjure up some kind of diamond shield to hold back a house fire while people evacuated. And you!”

“Enough!” Sunset all but yelled in her face. “How old were you then? Twelve? Imagination is a great thing when you’re young, but you’re in high school. Act like it! There’s no such thing as magic.”

Sunset could feel the girl’s shoulders shake in her grip and there was something else in her eyes … fear. “Ms. Sunset … you’re hurting me,” she said quietly.

Letting go immediately, Sunset took a step back and turned her back to Sunny. What the fuck are you doing, Sunset? Get a grip. “The school day is over. Shouldn’t you be getting home?”

“But … “

“Go,” Sunset cut her off, “and don’t let me catch you talking about nonsense like this around school again.”

The silence hung between them, and Sunny only spoke up when it became apparent that her teacher wasn’t gonna turn around to meet her eyes again. “Why are you denying it? I know you were there.”

Finally Sunset looked back at her student, with a pleading expression this time. “Just go home, Sunny. Please.” When she saw the tears in the corner of the young girl’s eyes and the silent nod, Sunset had to close her eyes again, because it broke her heart to see it.

Sunny put her hand on the doorknob to open the door, but paused to speak quietly. “I, uhm, I’m sorry, Ms. Sunset. Sorry for the trouble, just … You saved my dad’s life that day, you and your friends did. I’ve been looking for answers for years, and then when I ran into you on the first day of school, I … I just wanted to say thank you. So, … thank you.”

When Sunset heard the door open, a cacophony of voices from her memory assaulted her, her own voice, her own stupid voice from her younger days. “Why won’t you just tell me?” “If this spell is so dangerous, shouldn’t I know about it?” “What’s so wrong about me just wanting to know?” “You’re not doing this to keep me safe! You just want to keep me from becoming as powerful as you are! More powerful even!” “If you won’t teach me, then I’m just gonna have to find the answers myself.” “Goodbye, … Princess Celestia.”

“Wait!” Sunset found herself saying the word before she could stop herself. When she looked over, she found that Sunny had stopped and was looking over at her, expecting Sunset to say something else. The next voice that spoke was in Sunset’s head again, not her own this time, but a warm Southern drawl that had never steered her wrong and which drowned out the demons of her past. “I’ve found that honesty is usually the best policy, sugarcube.” Drawing in a deep breath to get the shakes out of her system, Sunset now spoke calmly. “You’re right, Sunny. I’m sorry. I was there that day, and if you were too, then I reckon you deserve to know the truth. Sit down, please.”

No sooner had the words been spoken than Sunny had slammed the door shut, sprinted over to a desk in the front row and sat straight at attention as if class had just started.

“Okay,” Sunset said, gathering her thoughts. “But first, you gotta promise me that what I’m about to tell you stays between us. Nobody else at school can know.” She grimaced. “Especially not Principal Celestia.”

Sunny thought about that for a moment. “Oh, I see. She’d probably call us both crazy if she knew.”

“Worse,” Sunset replied, “she’d probably call me unemployed. Don’t ever use the word magic around her, she’s allergic to it.”

Mulling that one over for a moment longer, Sunny gasped. “She knows!?”

Sunset rolled her eyes and nodded. Walking over to the window, she pointed towards the entrance of the gymnasium. “See that spot? I turned into a demon right over there my senior year.”

With a puzzled look, Sunny asked: “You mean figuratively, right?”

“No, I mean literally. Red skin, fangs, claws … bat wings,” Sunset answered, scratching the back of her head. “The whole shebang. If you were in Maretime Bay three years ago, you should have a good idea of why the principal wants to keep magic as far away from this school as she possibly can.”

Sunny nodded in understanding. “Alright. I promise I won’t tell anybody. But what I saw that day wasn’t a demon. It looked more like an angel to me. Why would you want to hide that from the world?”

Sunset chuckled. “Yeah, that was the other form. I like the eye shadow that comes with it,” she said, moving her finger in front of her eyes. “Never liked the dress, though. Pink’s not really my color. At any rate, you’re doing yourself a favor by not talking about it. Something about magic in this world makes it so that it can’t be recorded. There was a dozen teenagers with camera phones there when I pulled that stunt back in the day, all the videos ever showed was some girls cat fighting over a stupid crown.” She grimaced at the memory. “Which is mortifying in a different way from the demon thing when I look back on it. But it was the same in Maretime Bay. With no proof of magic, the news came up with some one-of-a-kind natural disaster to explain what happened.”

“Is this why you wouldn’t talk about it? Are you saying magic is dangerous?”

Sunset thought about that for a good long while. “No, magic isn’t dangerous in and of itself. Magic is also wonderful and can be used to do great things for you and others.” She smiled to herself, recalling a feeling she hadn’t felt in a long time. She walked closer to Sunny with an odd look. Taking out her pendant and holding it in her left hand, she touched Sunny’s arm with her right. She stared intently for a couple of seconds, waiting for something to happen.

“Uhm, Ms. Sunset?” Sunny said after the silence had stretched into uncomfortable territory with a quizzical look on her face. “What are you doing?”

Sunset let go and shook her head. “Nothing. Forget it,” she said, tucking the geode crystal back into her shirt, feeling foolish for expecting something to happen and too embarrassed to explain herself any further. “But magic definitely can be dangerous in the wrong hands,” she went on, “and some of it is even dangerous inherently. I wish every day that we could have tracked down the Horn of Sombra before it was activated in Maretime Bay.”

“Is that what caused it? Who’s Sombra?” Sunny asked.

“Yes and not important right now. The important thing is, this world isn’t ready for magic. When I was your age, maybe a little older, I thought that maybe magic could be a part of this world. But it was too volatile and I wasn’t wise enough to be the guide this world needed. Where I come from, magic has always been there. Society itself has evolved along with it, found ways to properly and safely use it. Introducing it here, it was like dropping a bomb on this world, and I’m partially responsible for the collateral damage it caused when it went off. Magic is gone from this world now, and on balance I think that’s probably for the best.” Her eyes strayed into the distance and there was a sadness behind them. “Yes, my friends and I were pretty magical in our youth, and it was awesome most of the time. … We also paid a heavy price for it in the end, and all the magic in two worlds couldn’t fix it.” Sunset went silent and continued to stare into the distance.

“Hold on,” Sunny spoke up, “you keep saying things like ‘this world’ and things about society where ‘you come from,’ where magic exists. … Ms. Sunset, just who are you and where do you come from?”

Pulled back into the real world from her reverie, Sunset chuckled quietly and looked towards the clock indicating four in the afternoon. She knew that every answer would beget another question or several for a good long while. “Ah, what the hell? I told you this much already, and I am a history teacher. So let me back up and start at the beginning.” Sunset made herself comfortable by sitting on the edge of Sunny’s desk. “Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there lived two royal sisters …”

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Sunset stood in the parking lot in the outskirts of town, alternately pacing back and forth and leaning against her car. Her eyes turned to the sky, cloudy and overcast, anywhere but where she actually intended on going.

“Sunset Shimmer?”

She jumped, startled by someone calling out her name. Then she spotted the owner of the voice, a woman in a dark blue coat. “Vice-principal Luna,” she said, recognizing the woman.

“Nice to see you,” Luna said with a warm smile. “How are you adjusting to the job? My sister tells me you had a bit of a rough start.”

Sunset rubbed her neck. “Yeah, your old history class gave me a bit of trouble the first day, but I think I’ve gotten through to most of them. I got some good advice. ‘Above all, to thine own self be true.’” She noted the bouquet of blue roses in Luna’s arms. “Here to see someone?”

She nodded and shifted the flowers in her arms a bit. “My mother,” she replied simply, casting a glance over towards the East end of the cemetery adjoining the parking space.

“Your sister’s not with you?”

Luna shook her head slowly. “We usually go together, but this is a special time of year. I always make it a point to come alone at least once around Halloween. It was her favorite holiday, and mine too.” A whimsical expression crossed her face. “I used to compete with Celestia over everything when we were young. She always seemed to outshine me, and I was so desperate to get a win, even when it came to our mother’s love. Of course, our mother had love enough for both of us, but tell that to a young girl. But Celestia never liked Halloween. Never understood why, but it was fine by me. It meant for one night a year, while my sister locked herself in her room sulking, I’d have mother all to myself. We’d craft our own costumes, make sweets, go trick-or-treating. It was magical.”

“I’m sure she appreciates you coming by,” Sunset said when Luna’s words had trailed off into a fond silence.

Looking back, Luna nodded with a smile. “I’d like to think so. How about you? What brings you here?”

Sunset looked away uncomfortably. “A friend. I was recently reminded that our actions, however noble they might have been at the time, can sometimes have unforeseen consequences. Been working up the courage to go in and see her.”

Luna followed Sunset’s gaze towards the Western fields of the graveyard and nodded in understanding. “I see,” she said sadly before laying a comforting hand on Sunset’s shoulder and squeezing it lightly, “I’m sure she appreciates the visit, whatever the reason for it may be. Tell her I said hi.”

Sunset drew in a deep breath, forced a smile and nodded.

Returning the nod and smile, Luna left to attend to her business.

Steeling herself for what was to come, Sunset lowered her head and began marching purposefully in her intended direction, the pit in her stomach growing with every step. Zipping her jacket all the way up, she buried her hands in her pockets. The air was starting to get chilly this time of year, and she wished that she’d chosen a sunny late autumn day to come by instead. Before she knew it, her feet came to a halt in front of a gravestone.

“Hey, friend,” Sunset said softly. “How are you doing? Sorry I haven’t been around much lately. Keeping busy these days. Of course, that never stopped you, did it? You always made time for your friends, even when you had a million other things going on at once.”

Sunset took a cupcake out of her pocket, unwrapping it from the cellophane she had carried it in, and slowly broke the treat in half right in the middle. Placing one half on the gravestone, she took a small nibble from her own half, before chuckling. “Rainbow Dash, you know, she posted a picture of this huge double rainbow over a football field on her social media last week. Her first professional match, they put her in for the second half. It was raining through the entire match, and then suddenly at the end there it was, and … you know, it sounds silly when I try to say it out loud.”

Sunset looked up into the sky, grey and more grey and her own breath condensing in the cold autumn air. “Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. It’s still silly, but I kinda wanna believe that was you dropping in on an old friend on her big day, and the rainbow was your way of saying hi.”

She stood there silently for a while, alternately drawing in her breath several times to say more with no words coming, looking up into the sky to hold back the tears that continued to push into the corners of her eyes, and then forcing a big smile cause that’s what the occupant of the grave would have wanted her to do. When she could take it no more, she put the other half of the cupcake next to the first and said tearfully: “I still miss you … so much, my friend. We all do.”

Turning, she wiped the tears from her face when she couldn’t hold them back any longer. “Dammit, every time. It’s been nearly two years already. Keep it together, Sunset. She wouldn’t want to see you like that. She’d tell you to smile and laugh, remember the good times and not the bad.” Pulling out her cellphone, Sunset turned back around with another forced smile. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to tell you: Weird Al came out with a new single. Listen to this one, you’re gonna love it.”

She pressed play on her music app and the cheerful tunes of a polka song began to ring out across the graveyard. At least she wasn’t forcing herself to make casual conversation anymore, but without the exercise, the tears came back in force, yet Sunset kept smiling through the quiet sobbing as she stared at the inscription on the headstone.

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It was Wednesday, or as her colleagues often referred to it, hump day. But it wasn’t the feeling of the week being only half over that had Sunset staring moodily into the grey morning through the window of the teachers’ lounge.

“Hey, kid.”

When Ms. Harshwhinny sat down next to her at the table, Sunset simply sighed. “Gladys, I’m really not in the mood to backseat swipe your Tinder backlog today.”

Harshwhinny gave her a penetrating gaze and nodded, and to her surprise she wasn’t shoving a phone in Sunset’s face. “I can see that. I actually wanted to check in with you. I know it’s hard, and you’re feeling down right now.”

“What?” Sunset blinked. Had she been that obvious? She hadn’t told anyone. Then the thought occurred to her that Luna might have tipped them off after seeing her.

“Hey, Mr. Acting Vice-principal! I think our newbie needs a pep talk!” she shouted over towards the couch.

Cranky grumbled under his breath and folded up the newspaper he was reading, but made his way over regardless, clapping Sunset on the shoulder and sitting down with the two women. “Tough break, kid. You’ve got my condolences.”

“Thanks,” Sunset replied somewhat subdued. It had been hard to keep the overflowing memories at bay.

Cranky nodded. “Yep, I don’t blame you for wanting to jump out a window the other day. It sucks that you gotta teach an elective your first year.”

Sunset blinked, confusion taking a hold of her as she looked into the sympathetic eyes of her colleagues. “What? I’m stoked about that! My entire history class signed up, plus a couple extra students. That more than meets the quorum. I was worried that I wouldn’t get to teach the class.”

Cranky and Gladys looked at each other and then back at Sunset, their expressions turning from sympathy to pure pity. “Oh, Sunset,” Harshwhinny said, “no teacher actually wants to teach electives.”

“It’s true,” Cranky said, backing her up. “I actually broke open a fine bottle of Scotch in celebration when I saw that not enough students had signed up for my woodworking class this year.”

Sunset leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Is this gonna be another one of your lectures on why it actually sucks to be a teacher?” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Alright, lay it on me, sensei. Why is teaching an elective so bad?”

“Sunset,” Cranky began while taking a bite from an apple, “electives attract two kinds of students. The first kind are those that are failing one or more of their regular classes. So they look for the class with the lowest requirements and the most gullible, bleeding heart teacher to get some extra credits. The second kind are those who don’t need the extra credits, but are required to take at least one elective anyway. So they look for the class that requires the least amount of effort to just coast through and possibly catch a nap once they’ve worn their teacher down enough to stop caring about more than their physical presence with sheer disinterest.”

“What about the third kind?” Sunset asked flatly. “The kind that is actually interested in the subject being taught and wants to have a fun and engaging learning experience based on their own preference?”

Cranky and Gladys stared at Sunset as if she’d suddenly grown a second head. Then they burst out laughing. “Sunset,” Ms. Harshwhinny said, “I taught you statistics and probabilities. What do you think are the odds of a student like that being in the school to begin with and signing up for your class at the same time?”

“Yeah,” Cranky concurred. “Look, I’m not categorically denying the existence of students like that. But they’re like Bigfoot. They might be out there hiding in the woods somewhere, but I’ve never seen one.”

Sunset slammed her hands on the table and stood up abruptly. “You know what? Thanks for the pep talk, seriously. I was actually feeling a little blue, but you two lit a fire in my belly.” Standing up straight, she pointed towards the door. “Cause I’m gonna go out there today and teach a bunch of kids how fun and awesome German literature can be. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Remember to take a plaster cast and a hair sample if you find that Sasquatch student of yours,” Cranky hollered after her as Sunset stormed out of the teachers’ lounge, picking up a stack of books along the way. “Or else nobody’ll believe you!”

Sunset slammed the door shut behind herself. Making her way through the hallways in record time, she stopped herself short of opening the door to the classroom. Closing her eyes, she drew in a deep breath as she brought her free arm across her chest, held it there for a moment and slowly breathed out as she moved it back to her side before opening the door. “Guten Morgen, alle miteinander,” she greeted her class with a bright smile. “That’s good morning everyone in German, and welcome to Intro to German.”

Students took their place and conversations stopped as Sunset picked up a clipboard with the names of the students who had signed up to check attendance. By now, she knew most of the names and faces, but she decided to go through the list properly for the first lesson. “Posey Bloom.”

“Present,” said a girl wearing a prim and proper white blouse and black skirt with stockings.

“Misty Brightdawn.”

“Here!” The voice squeaked from a girl with curly blue hair. She’d transferred in a couple weeks into the school year and was now a part of class 2-A as well.

“Sprout Cloverleaf.”

“Awesome as always!”

“Not according to that last pop quiz,” Sunset said without looking up, paused for the inevitable chuckle of the 2-A students and went on. “Rufus Lulamoon.”

“Present and prepared,” said a boy with dark teal hair in a far more grandiose manner than his simple looks let on while rolling his Rs in a way that did make Sunset look up with a feeling of nostalgia.

“How’s your cousin, Rufus?”

“Great and Powerful as always, Ms. Sunset. She just sold out a show in Baltimare.”

“Hm, tell her to set a ticket aside for me next time she’s in Canterlot. Moving on, Izzy Moonbow.” Silence. “Izzy?” Sunset looked towards Hitch who gave her a shrug in return. Frowning, she moved on in quick succession. “Pipp, Sunny, Zipp, Hitch all present. Alright then.”

Sunset took her preferred teaching position, half sitting on the corner of her desk, and looked over her students. “You know, I always like to manage expectations for the start of a new class. Let’s start with a little test.”

“A test already? We haven’t had a chance to study.”

“Not that kind of test,” Sunset told Posey who had spoken up. “You know, some people believe that students fall into two categories when it comes to electives. First category are those who need extra credit for failing other classes. Anyone here identify with that group?”

Sunset’s smile immediately dropped when several hands went up. Sprout and Zipp, whose talents lay more in the physical rather than the academic, she could understand. Misty needed to make up for lost time. The one that surprised her was Hitch.

“Okay,” Sunset said and stood up. “As Rufus’ cousin would say: Come one, come all! We got something for everybody!” Finding no chalk near the blackboard, she cast a quick glance over her shoulder at Sprout who was looking all too innocent and produced some chalk from her pocket, writing the word Kirchturmwendeltreppengeländerschonbezug on the board and underlining it. “There, first student to translate the word correctly gets an easy A on day one. No phones! Dictionary only,” she added, pointing at Pipp without even looking, which was followed by the pouty clatter of a cellphone on a desk.

“The hell?” Sprout gawked. “What even is that A with the little dots in there? And that’s one word?”

“It’s called an umlaut and yes, that is one word. At least in German it is,” Sunset said and went on. “Now, the other group supposedly consists of those who are looking for an easy time because they take the elective that looks like the least amount of work. Any Easy Riders in my class?”

The urge to facepalm rose as Pipp and Rufus raised their hands with an apologetic look, followed by one more hesitant hand.

“Et tu, Sunny?” Sunset asked in mock hurt.

“I did have another reason to sign up, but, er … you know. Still excited to be in your class, Ms. Sunset.”

Sunset dead-panned and picked up one of the books she brought. “Alright, all I ask is that you don’t drool on these when you use them as pillows. That comes out of my paycheck otherwise.” She turned to the one remaining student with a smile. “Well, Posey. It looks like I’ve got at least one student who comes with a genuine passion and interest in the subject.”

Posey looked directly back at her. “Oh, no. I just thought another foreign language would look good on my college application.”

Pretending like she’d been shot, Sunset clutched her heart and doubled over. “You’re killing me here, Posey. You’re a sophomore. You should be thinking about boys, not college.”

“Excuse me?” Posey replied in shock.

“Or girls,” Sunset added. “I don’t judge.” As most of the class had a good laugh at the expense of the rapidly blushing Posey, Sunset thought to herself: Just you wait. I’ll make you all believers in Bigfoot before the year is over. Everyone suddenly turned at the sound of a loud bang outside the door. Sunset dropped the stack of books on Sunny’s desk. “Pass these out to everyone, please.”

Opening the classroom door, Sunset had a case of Déjà-vu when she found a girl rubbing her forehead. “Oh, Ms. Sunset. Hi!”

“Izzy,” she replied flatly, “you’re making it a habit to be late to my introductory lessons.”

“Sorry.”

“Grab a seat and a book,” Sunset said after letting her in and closing the door behind her. Holding up her own copy of the book that was being passed out, she said: “Now, I’m personally not a fan of how most language courses teach the beginnings. An entire year’s work, all so you can order a Wiener Schnitzel at a restaurant. Don’t worry, you’ll learn that, too. But we’re going to be reading this over the course of the year: Der Schimmelreiter by Theodor Storm, The Rider on the White Horse.” She flipped the book open to a random page. “Now, don’t worry. This is a bilingual edition, so you’ll always have the English translation right next to the original. I don’t expect you to be fluent by the end of the year, but I expect you to be able to read a page and get the gist of what’s going on. I always found practical application to be the best way to learn.”

Raising her hand, Sunny asked: “Is this the book that you used to learn German, Ms. Sunset?”

“Heck no,” Sunset replied flatly. “I learned most of my German by binge-watching the German adaptation of The Office. But Principal Celestia wouldn’t spring for ten DVD box sets of Stromberg plus overseas shipping as course material, so here we are.”

While most of the rest of the class chuckled at that, Zipp crossed out something in her notebook, wrote something else and eventually looked up to raise her hand.

“Yes, Zipp? Question?”

“Church tower spiral staircase railing protective cover,” she said haltingly but confidently.

Izzy turned her head to look around the classroom. “What? Where?”

“On the blackboard,” Zipp added, and Sunset now noticed that there was an open dictionary next to Zipp’s notebook. “The translation is: Church tower spiral staircase railing protective cover.”

Izzy squinted at the word on the blackboard.

“Oh, right,” Sunset said, having nearly forgotten her little challenge and not really expecting someone to work it out, let alone this quickly. She turned to the blackboard, went through each constituting word in her mind and nodded. “Correct. I’m a woman of my word. Zephyrina starts us off right by getting an A on the first day.”

Zipp grinned triumphantly while Sunset could feel her own lips curl into a grin to match.

Holding up a piece of chalk and giving it a twirl between her fingers, she said: “Well now, detective. You don’t seem sufficiently challenged by working that one out. Looks like I’ll have to up my game, won’t I?”

Cracking her knuckles, Zipp narrowed her eyes and replied: “Bring it on, teach.”

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Sunset watched the last few seconds tick down on her watch until the bell announced the end of the period. “Alright, pencils down. Time to turn in your answers,” she told her history class.

Some sighed, some groaned as Hitch collected the answer sheets from his classmates and dropped them off on Sunset’s desk. “Here you go, Ms. Shimmer.”

“Thank you, Hitch,” she said and added: “And Hitch, would you mind staying a moment after class?”

“Uh, sure. Just a second.” She watched him pack up while the rest of the class filed out before coming back up towards her desk. “What is it?”

“Step into my office.”

He looked around in confusion. “Where’s your office?”

Waving her arms around the general area next to the teacher’s desk, she replied: “Let’s say over here.”

“You know, you’re really funny, Ms. Shimmer,” he said with a chuckle, pulling up a chair.

“Hm, it’s a fine line to walk for a teacher between being funny and being a joke. I wanted to ask you something. The other day in German class, you raised your hand when I asked about students being there for the extra credit.”

He scratched his neck. “Yeah, I guess. I wasn’t the only one.”

“No,” she admitted, “but you got good grades. You’re class representative. You’re passing all your classes. So what do you need extra credit for?”

Hitch scrunched up his face. “Saying that it would look good on my college application isn’t gonna fly, is it?”

Sunset dead-panned. “You’re a good student, but you’re not maniacally academic like Posey is. What gives?”

He sighed. “I’ve got some absences that I need to balance out. I’ve missed a couple of afternoon classes so far this semester.”

“Like, how many?”

“Like, a lot?”

“Hitch!” Sunset gasped.

“I’m doing all the assignments and I’m passing the classes,” he said defensively. “But I’m working after school, so sometimes the schedule conflicts.”

“Hitch,” she began, “I’m the first person to give advice along the lines of there’s more to life than just school. But by the same token, there’s more to school than just doing the homework. Working part-time at your age is a good thing, if you ask me. But it shouldn’t come at the expense of your education.”

“Look, Ms. Shimmer. I appreciate you checking in, but this really isn’t your problem.”

She could see him draw back from the conversation from his body language. “No, it technically isn’t,” she admitted, clicking her tongue, “at least as long as you’re not skipping any of my classes. But if I see your grades starting to slip, you better believe I’m gonna make it my problem.”

He nodded. “Fair enough. I better make sure that doesn’t happen then. May I go?”

Sunset nodded quietly.

After getting up, Hitch gestured towards the empty air next to the desk. “You want the door to your office open or closed?”

“Get outta here,” she replied while returning his grin.

Sunset began to pack up her own things, including the history test she’d just conducted, and inevitably her eyes fell on the empty tray next to the blackboard. “Guess it’s time for yet another trip to the supply closet for chalk,” she grumbled to herself.

On her way out the door, she noticed a smudge on the laminated class schedule hanging on the wall next to the door. Pretty certain of who was responsible, she wiped the smudge away with her sleeve, muttering: “Seriously, somebody needs to glue a tennis ball to that girl’s forehead before she hurts herself.” She stared at the printout of the schedule for a bit. “They really could print this in bigger letters, though.”

Moving on, her trip through the halls took her by the entrance to the auditorium, and a soft singing voice grabbed her attention. Intrigued, she took a detour and stood in the door to listen. It didn’t take her long to find the source in the otherwise empty auditorium.

In the center of the stage stood Pipp Petals, her eyes closed and holding a broom like it was a microphone stand. She was singing a heartbreakingly beautiful ballad as if she was the only person in the world right now.

The song swelled into a crescendo, and Pipp’s voice was dancing through the high octaves with such precision and feeling that Sunset couldn’t help but be impressed. Pipp belted out the last few notes as if they carried her very soul around the room, and when all was quiet, Sunset instinctively began to applaud.

Hitherto unaware that she had an audience, Pipp jumped and let the broom clatter to her feet. After seeing Sunset standing in the door with a smile, she blushed and picked up the broom to put it away before making her way over to her teacher.

“Sorry,” she said. “I know I’m not really supposed to be in here.”

Sunset looked around the empty room and shrugged. “As long as you’re not skipping classes and you don’t break anything in here, I don’t see the harm in it.” She added with a smile: “You have a beautiful singing voice.”

“Thanks,” Pipp replied a little embarrassed, “not that I’m gonna get to make much use of it this year.”

“What do you mean?”

She fidgeted around a bit before saying: “Ms. Sunset, do you remember the question you asked us in your first German lesson? About our reasons for taking your class?”

“You mean the question where you lot tore my spirit to shreds with your replies like only teenagers are capable of doing?” Sunset asked as if she hadn’t just discussed the very same thing with Hitch. “Yeah, I remember vaguely.”

“I wanted to apologize for that, for both of us, Rufus and I,” she said. “It’s not like we don’t care. On the contrary, we like your teaching style. Your classes are fun. That’s why you were our fallback. It’s just that we both really wanted to take drama class this year.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Cause not enough students signed up. Last year’s class was mostly seniors. They’re gone, and no freshmen are interested.”

“What about the drama club?” Sunset asked.

Pipp shrugged. “It’s the same thing. It’s just the two of us. I’m technically the president now, but we don’t even have an advisor. What kind of play are we supposed to put on? Principal Celestia says that, if we don’t get any new members by winter break, she’s going to have to disband the club altogether.”

“I’m sorry,” Sunset said simply.

Pipp shook her head. “It is what it is. I’ve come to terms with it. I just wanted to apologize if we gave you the impression that we weren’t interested in your class.”

Sunset nodded. “I appreciate that, Pipp. Really.” Then she raised an eyebrow and added: “If you’re in an apologetic mood, maybe you ought to apologize for that Tweet of me with the chalk dust.”

Pipp scoffed and gave her teacher an infuriatingly smug grin. “I’m not sorry for that. Have you seen all the likes and replies? #HotForTeacher was trending for days. And don’t get me wrong, I love what you’ve got going on right here,” she said, gesturing at Sunset’s jeans and leather jacket outfit. “But you absolutely rock a pencil skirt, Ms. Sunset. These hips don’t lie. You know what I’m saying?” She traced an hourglass shape in the air with her hands to emphasize her point.

Blushing, Sunset replied: “I know what you’re saying, but do you know what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying, why are you single, Ms. Sunset? Are you on any dating sites? I could help you with your online profile.”

“And this conversation is over,” Sunset declared abruptly while raising her hands and turning around on her heel. “I get enough second hand Tinder exposure from Ms. Harshwhinny in the teachers’ lounge.”

“Ohmygosh, Ms. Harshwhinny is on Tinder?” Pipp asked gleefully. “Do you know what her online handle is?”

“Can’t hear anything cause I’m walking away!” Sunset said and began marching with purpose in the direction of the supply room.

After a couple moments of resolute walking, Sunset finally arrived at her destination and unlocked the supply room. She flicked the light switch and nothing happened. Grumbling, she turned the flashlight function of her phone on and began rummaging around boxes half in the dark, until she found what she was looking for.

“Ms. Shimmer.”

“Waah!” The sudden voice in the half darkness startled her into dropping the pack of chalk. When she turned around, she saw an older man with a long white beard standing in the doorway. “Oh, it’s just you. You scared the heck out of me.”

“I’ve noticed that the chalk in your classroom keeps disappearing and needs to be refilled often,” he said, his features half obscured by the back-lighting.

“Uh, yeah. It’s been a problem.” Picking up the chalk she had dropped, she frowned. “To be honest, I do have a suspect in mind, but I can’t prove it right now.”

He nodded sagely. “Not to worry. I have already taken care of it.”

“You have?” she asked hopefully.

“Yes, indeed. I’ve trimmed back the hedges outside the window. They won’t be able to sneak in at night and take it anymore.”

“Erm, thank you?” Sunset ventured, reasonably convinced that the shrubbery outside the classroom had nothing to do with why the chalk kept disappearing.

The man they called ‘The Phantom in the Halls’ nodded and moved away from the door so quietly that she couldn’t even make out any footsteps. When Sunset stuck her head outside, he was gone without a trace.

“That guy is so weird,” Sunset said to herself. She wasn’t even sure if he was faculty or just a janitor. She’d certainly never seen him teach a class. Nobody knew, apparently not even Celestia. But he’d always just been here, even back when Sunset had been a student. “And why does it always feel like I should know who he is?”

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“Oh, Izzy, Izzy, Izzy. Why?” Sunset grumbled as she sat at the table in the teachers’ lounge after classes were done for the day, grading papers and shaking her head.

“You know, mumbling doesn’t help,” Ms. Harshwhinny, the sole other person present, said from the couch, not taking her eyes off her phone.

“What?”

“If you’re gonna complain about your students, you really need to let it out. Mumbling to yourself is the same as keeping it in.”

Sunset frowned and put down her red pen. “It’s just so frustrating. She aced all the multiple choice questions, but it’s like she didn’t even read the essay question I put on the blackboard.”

“Mm-hm.”

Sunset watched her fellow teacher who still hadn’t taken her eyes off the phone and shook her head. “What’s the point in me spelling it out? You don’t care.”

“Izzy Moonbow,” Gladys sighed, “seems to be a total airhead, but is actually really smart. Grasps new and difficult concepts quickly during class, so you get the feeling that you don’t have to worry about her. Then, out of the blue, she totally biffs on a test and you don’t know why.” Now she actually looked up and straight toward Sunset. “That about sum it up?”

“Yeah,” Sunset said in amazement. “Pretty much. Why is she like this?”

Gladys shrugged. “I can only tell you what it isn’t. I nagged Cheerilee until she gave that class a standardized aptitude test during homeroom at the end of last semester. I thought it was word problems, but Izzy’s reading comprehension is actually above average, and while she’s a bit of an airhead, I’ve had her long enough to recognize that she doesn’t have any attention disorder. She’s perfectly capable of keeping focus during class.”

Sunset simply looked at her and began to grin.

“What?” Gladys asked in an annoyed tone while narrowing her eyes.

“You care,” she replied. “You put on the grumpy teacher act, but you actually do care about your students.”

Ms. Harshwhinny rolled her eyes. “Of course I care,” she sighed. “Didn’t give up on you after that Fall Formal fiasco, did I? That’s the diabolical thing about this job. You don’t get into it unless you care about kids, even if they end up breaking your heart by turning away from the natural sciences and go into the humanities.” She gave Sunset a pointed look.

Sunset had the sense to look a little sheepish at that. “Then shouldn’t we try to help them at every opportunity we get?”

“Sunset, you can’t help them all, especially if you don’t know what the problem is. If you try, this job will kill you. At some point, you gotta call it quits.”

Sunset snorted. “Well, I’m not ready to give up on Izzy just yet. The answer has to be in here somewhere. It just doesn’t make any sense.” She went quiet, staring at the pop quiz in front of her and wishing right now to simply be able to touch Izzy’s arm and get a vision of why she was struggling. “You have 2-A in math, right? Did you have them last year?”

Gladys groaned. “You’re not gonna let this go, are you? Fine!” Actually putting her phone away, she stood up and made her way to a bookshelf, finding an old class book marked 1-A. She leafed through it for a moment to find a certain page and put the book down in front of Sunset. “There, those are Izzy’s grades in math for the last year. Read ‘em and weep.”

“Yikes,” Sunset remarked, going over the numbers, “that’s a roller coaster.”

“Tell me about it. She actually does well in the big exams, you know, mid-terms and finals. But it’s like her brain checks out for pop quizzes, which is weird. You’d think if it was something about test anxiety, it would be the other way around.”

Sunset put her head in her hands and went quiet. There had to be a reason for this inconsistency, and it didn’t seem to be the subject matter. She just seemed to flake on certain questions or tests at random, even though she should have been able to ace them. What else was there? There was her weird habit of running into the wall when checking the class schedule, too. Then Izzy’s face flashed in Sunset’s mind, of her squinting while looking at something she’d written on the blackboard. “Gladys, what do you do when you give them a pop quiz?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you print the test out and give each student a sheet?”

Harshwhinny scoffed. “On the copy budget we get from Principal Penny Pincher? Hell, no. Only for the big tests. You should remember how I do it. For a pop quiz, I just come in five minutes early and write the problems out on the back of the blackboard. Then I just flip it around when it’s time for the test.”

Sunset stood up abruptly and pulled out her phone. “I gotta go.”

Gladys shook her head and closed the book in front of her. “Yep, the lot of a teacher. You try to help them out, then they just get up and leave.”

Hearing that and stopping on her way out the door, Sunset turned around. “Gladys?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Remove crochet from your list of hobbies and for pity’s sake, delete that swimsuit picture from your gallery. It makes you look desperate.”

Ms. Harshwhinny pulled out her phone and gave Sunset a stern look. “You gotta put out some honey to catch flies, Sunset.”

“Just trust me on this and don’t say I never did anything for you.” With that, Sunset dialed a number from her contact list and walked out the door.

Fifteen minutes later, Sunset was standing in the Principal’s office in front of a large file cabinet, her cellphone held in the crook of her neck while she fiddled with her key chain. “So you still got them? Do you mind if I borrow them?”

Suddenly, she could hear someone clear their throat from behind her and turned around, finding Principal Celestia standing there with a raised eyebrow.

“Uh, I’ll call you back, Twi. Better yet, I’ll swing by campus later to pick up the item. … ‘Kay, thanks.” Hanging up the phone, she looked at the principal who had just walked in. “Hi.”

“Hello, Sunset,” Celestia greeted flatly.

“Um, the door was open. I just needed to have a look at student file, but I can’t seem to find the key for this blasted file cabinet,” she said, frowning as she went through her keys one by one.

“That’s because you don’t have one,” Celestia replied and moved around to stand between Sunset and the cabinet. “New privacy protection laws. Only the principal and vice-principal have access to the permanent student records.”

Sunset pursed her lips and put away her keys. “I need the home address and contact information for one of my students, Izzy Moonbow.”

“And you need that information because?” Celestia asked, not moving.

“I need to talk to her parents about something important.”

“Hm, and this can’t wait until the next PTA meeting?”

Sunset shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. The longer we wait, the more this could end up hurting Izzy.”

“What’s this about?”

Sunset opened her mouth and closed it again, grimacing. “I don’t wanna say until I’m sure. But I need to talk to her parents to confirm it.” When Celestia remained silent, she added: “I know I haven’t been a teacher for long. But you should know me well enough to know that I wouldn’t ask unless I thought it was important.”

Celestia gave her a long look before pulling out her keys to unlock the cabinet. “Moonbow, you said?” she asked as she rifled through the folders. “I should warn you. Parents can get a little prickly when a teacher comes calling unannounced.”

“I think I’ll have to take that chance.”

Pulling out a manila folder, Celestia nudged the cabinet drawer shut with her hips and began reading as she went over to her desk. “Moonbow. Moonbow. Oh yes, I remember them. The old hippie couple from downtown. A little odd, but they were lovely people.”

“Were?” Sunset asked carefully.

“Tragic accident a couple years ago,” Celestia said matter-of-factly as she transcribed something onto a post-it note. “Guardian’s name is Alphabittle Blossomforth, he’s listed as Izzy’s godfather.” She folded the note in half and held it up.

When Sunset moved to take it, Celestia pulled it back out of her reach.

“You’re sure this can’t be handled by a phone call or by talking to Izzy herself?”

Sunset shook her head. “I need to confirm something, and I think I need to talk to both of them in person to do it.”

Celestia looked down, seemingly deep in thought. “I spoke to my sister the other day, you know. So let me confirm something first. Is this about Izzy, … or is this about someone she reminds you of?”

The realization hit Sunset in the chest like a truck and she swallowed hard while holding eye contact with Celestia, a woman who was just as sharp and insightful as her pony counterpart. Sunset licked her lips and found them dry as sandpaper. “Maybe it’s a little of both,” she admitted upon reflection. “But this is something I might actually be able to fix. I need to try.”

Celestia sighed and wordlessly handed over the note with the address.

Sunset took it and nodded before leaving the office. “Thanks.”

Sunset was already having second thoughts when she pulled into the dark driveway in her Fiesta. The sun had already set by the time she’d made the round-trip between Canterlot U and the downtown address. Celestia’s words kept playing inside her mind. There was probably a better way to do this, but Sunset had never been one to take it slow when she could do something right now. And yet, hadn’t that gotten her in trouble as many times as it had helped? Perhaps she was about to make a grave mistake and actually make things worse, for Izzy, for herself, for the school. She shook her head and got out of the car. She was committed now.

The broad, wooden house looked like an arts and crafts project gone oversize, with bits of additional structures added on over the years at odd angles and in different wood, some mismatched solar arrays bolted haphazardly to the roof. In some ways, it looked inviting, full of years of love and care. But then in stark contrast stood an empty lawn, empty except for a single sign with the words “Solicitors not welcome” painted on it. Still, there were lights on, so she marched up to the front door and pressed the doorbell.

It took a few moments before she heard a shuffle on the other side and the door opened slightly, but only as far as the door chain bolted to the inside would allow. A dark eye looked at her from beneath a bushy eyebrow and said nothing.

“Uh, hello. My name is Sunset Shimmer.”

“Not interested,” a gruff voice replied and the door slammed shut again.

Knocking on the door quickly, she shouted. “Wait! Mr. Alphabittle Blossomforth? I’m Izzy’s teacher. I need to talk to you about something important!”

The door once again opened just enough for the occupant to glare at the intruder and look her up and down. “A likely story. Can you prove it?”

Sunset spread her hands. “I’m a teacher, not a cop. I don’t carry a badge that says History Department on it.”

The door slammed shut again and she could hear heavy footsteps walking away from the door.

“Wow, Celestia wasn’t kidding about the prickly part,” Sunset muttered and banged on the door with more insistence. “Mr. Blossomforth! Please, I need to talk to you and Izzy!”

With no answer forthcoming, Sunset considered turning around. But she’d come too far to be stopped now by a stupid door, so she continued ringing the doorbell and knocking until she could hear two voices arguing briefly on the other side, followed by the clinking of a door chain being undone. When the door opened this time, it opened all the way to reveal a nervously smiling Izzy. “Ms. Sunset! Hi! It’s a surprise to see you here.”

“Hello, Izzy,” Sunset said in a level voice. “I’m sorry for dropping by so late and without warning, but I need to talk to you.”

Izzy glanced over her shoulder before answering. “Sure, how about we talk in my room?”

“Actually, I need to talk to both of you, you and your godfather.”

“Alright. Come in, I guess,” Izzy said after a moment of awkward silence and led Sunset towards the living room. “Have a seat while I get us something to drink,” she said quickly before snapping in the direction of the living room: “Be nice, uncle!”

Looking around the living room, Sunset noted that the owner of the bushy eyebrow had an equally bushy white beard and was wearing cargo shorts and a tie dye shirt. He was also wearing a frown as he resolutely ignored Sunset, busying himself by topping off a food bowl for what looked like two pet armadillos in a cage in the corner of the room.

Again, the room itself looked warm and inviting, all in earth tones and oddly no television set, but a lovingly handcrafted coffee table from a single wood log. Sunset sat down in a nearby beanbag chair, glad that she managed not to fall over. “You have a … very unique home,” she said awkwardly to break the silence. “You build a lot of it yourself?”

Alphabittle didn’t turn around and took a while to answer. “Used to. Her parents and I built this place together when we were part of the same commune.”

“Commune, interesting.”

He glared at her over his shoulder and Sunset did her level best not to look judgy, which she wasn’t. But her brain was drawing a blank on how to actually convey that without sounding insincere.

“Hope you like chai tea!” Thankfully, Izzy came in just then to save Sunset from the awkward silence and she took what seemed to be a handmade cup from the offered tray.

“That’s really good,” she said with a smile after taking a sip from the beverage.

“If you like that, you should come by Uncle Alphabittle’s tea shop sometime,” Izzy said brightly and motioned her uncle over to sit on the sofa next to her with a nod of her head and a glare.

Alphabittle grumbled something to himself, but eventually joined them. “Why are you here?” he asked Sunset directly.

Taking another sip from the genuinely nice beverage, Sunset began: “I’m here because Izzy’s grades have been a little … erratic, and I’m worried that there’s an underlying problem that will make her fall behind if it isn’t addressed.”

Izzy looked down. “I’m trying my best, it’s just sometimes I …” She trailed off.

Noticing that, Alphabittle grunted and narrowed his eyes at Sunset. “Ah, it’s very easy to blame others and not take responsibility for yourself, isn’t it? Maybe it’s not Izzy who is the problem. Maybe you’re just not a very good teacher.”

“Cut it out, uncle,” Izzy said, “Ms. Sunset is a great teacher.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. I’m still very new at this,” Sunset said in regard to Izzy’s remark before turning to Alphabittle. “But I agree with you. I don’t think Izzy is to blame, at least not entirely.”

That elicited a raised eyebrow from him, but no verbal response.

Sunset turned back towards her student. “Izzy, I’d like to conduct a little experiment if I may.” She pulled out her phone, pulled up a picture with a single word written on it and turned it toward Izzy while sitting about five feet across from her. “Can you read out this word for me?”

Izzy shrugged and said without hesitation: “Abendessen.” She pronounced the word carefully. When she got a look from her uncle, she added for his benefit: “It’s German for dinner.”

Sunset swiped to the next picture, the word on this one being written in smaller letters. “How about this one?”

Izzy narrowed her eyes, seemingly in an effort to remember the correct pronunciation. “Landfrieden,”she said eventually.

“What’s the point of this?” Alphabittle asked, annoyance obvious in his voice.

“Humor me,” Sunset said and swiped one more time to the next picture in the gallery she’d prepared, this one in even smaller print. He looked at it, grimaced and opened his mouth to say something. But Sunset shook her head slightly while giving him a hard stare that matched some of the ones he’d thrown at her and held it. “Izzy?”

When she didn’t answer, he finally looked over towards her and his own eyes widened. Izzy was frowning and squinting her eyes, a bead of sweat standing on her forehead. She laughed and shook her head. “You’re not playing fair, Ms. Sunset,” she accused in a voice that was trying just a little too hard to play things off. “We’ve only started German. That’s an entire sentence. I don’t know how to pronounce half the words in that.”

“… That’s English, Izzy.” Sunset could see the color drain from Izzy’s face out of the corner of her eyes, but her main focus remained on Alphabittle.

For the second time that day, she wished that she could simply reach out, touch someone and read their thoughts. But she could see the journey his face had taken, and that proved just as telling. Stubbornness had turned into defiance, then given way to confusion and finally turned to realization. Sunset exhaled a breath she didn’t realize until now she’d been holding since she’d left Harshwhinny sitting in the teachers’ lounge. It hadn’t been neglect, not deliberately anyway. Just ignorance and miscommunication.

Sunset pulled out a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses, slightly scuffed, that she’d picked up before coming here. “Try these on,” she said, handing them to her student. “They belonged to a friend of mine when she was about your age.”

Izzy glanced over at her uncle, took the glasses and blinked a couple of times after putting them on. When she looked at the phone Sunset was still holding up, a dry chuckle escaped her throat. “’If you can’t read this, you probably need glasses,’” she read out loud before taking them off again.

Alphabittle looked at Izzy while Sunset put her phone away. “Izzy,” he said softly. “How long has this been going on?”

She shrugged and replied meekly. “I dunno. I guess it started a year or so ago. It was just really far away stuff in the beginning. Didn’t even notice it at first. I thought maybe if I gave it some time, it’d go away on its own.”

“Why didn’t you talk to me, kiddo?”

She shrugged again and shook her head. “I dunno. You’re always telling me that you can’t rely on anyone, that we all have to deal with our own problems. … I didn’t wanna bother you.”

In that moment, he looked like a man who had been ignoring every storm siren and now the waves were crashing down around his ears. “Izzy, this is the kind of stuff you should be bothering me with. You can always come talk to me.”

“Really?”

“Yes, Izzy,” Sunset said softly, still managing to startle the two of them by reminding them that she was in fact still present. “And you can talk to me, too. You’re a smart, independent young woman. But we all need a little help sometimes.”

She looked over towards Alphabittle who gave her a reaffirming nod and then back at Sunset, a smile finally working its way back onto her face as she held out the glasses.

“Keep them for now. They’re a loaner. You can give them back when you get your own pair.”

“You sure?”

Sunset nodded and turned to Alphabittle. “But you should take her to an optician as soon as possible. She needs a pair with the right prescription before things get any worse.”

“I’ll take the day off tomorrow,” he replied gravely, as if to make a solemn vow. “We’ll go to an optician first to get her a proper pair of glasses, and I’ll make an appointment with an ophthalmologist to make sure this isn’t anything more serious than myopia.”

Slapping her knees and breathing a final sigh of relief, Sunset stood up. “Sounds like my work here is done. Sorry for dropping in unannounced and disturbing your evening.” She smiled at Izzy. “I’ll see you in class, Izzy.”

“Bye, Ms. Sunset.”

Alphabittle also stood up. “Uhm, let me walk you to your car, Ms. Shimmer.”

The difference in attitude was quite stark, but Sunset took the awkward silence from the man over having a door slammed in her face repeatedly.

She opened the car door and they both stood there for a moment until they both turned in reaction to a light coming on in the house. They could see Izzy through the window, standing in front of a mirror while trying on her glasses repeatedly, smiling every now and then.

“I’ve really fucked this one up, haven’t I?” Alphabittle sighed heavily.

“Oh yeah, big time,” Sunset replied.

He looked at her. “Harsh, but fair. I can see why Izzy respects you.”

Sunset shook her head and spoke more softly. “Mr. Blossomforth, I didn’t come here to pass judgment on you.” Not if it turned out to be an honest mistake anyway, she added silently. “We all make mistakes. Trust me, I’ve made some fine ones in my time, and I’m just glad tonight wasn’t one of them.”

He looked up into the night sky, watching the first stars twinkle with a forlorn look on his face. “Her parents would have noticed. They were saints. Never hurt a fly, never spoke an unkind word to anyone, even those who deserved it. When she was born, they got rid of their gas guzzling VW van, you know. Started taking the bike everywhere. Said they wanted to make sure the world their daughter grew up in was still worth living in.”

“Sounds like a noble sentiment.”

“Yeah, they were real noble,” he said darkly, “right up until some drunk asshole in an SUV ran a stop sign. And just like that, they were gone. Where’s the nobility in that, I ask you. I lost my two best friends that day, and I still get angry thinking about it. Been angry at the world ever since. Angry at them too for leaving her sometimes. So I tried to teach her to stand on her own two feet, never rely on anyone so the world can’t hurt her.”

“I meant what I said earlier,” Sunset said in hopes of turning the conversation around, “Izzy is smart and independent and creative. No doubt you taught her that.”

He shook his head. “Maybe, but that lesson backfired something fierce, didn’t it?”

“What happened to the guy? In the SUV?”

He laughed ruefully. “Oh, they got him. Yanked his license obviously. No jail time, though. Izzy got a bit of money for emotional damages. I’ve been keeping it in a savings account for her. But it doesn’t bring them back, does it? They should be here for her, not an angry old man like myself. I was so bitter. I still am. If I could bring them back by taking their place, I would.”

Sunset nodded. “I get it.”

Alphabittle opened his mouth as if to ask how she could possibly know, but Sunset simply held his gaze while memories of Pinkie Pie threatened to overwhelm her from the back of her mind. Seemingly recognizing that look, he simply said: “Yeah, I see that you do.”

After a long moment of silence, Sunset said: “You know, you may have lost your best friends that day, but she lost a lot more.”

He nodded, turning to look back at Izzy who was still happily modeling her new glasses in front of the mirror with a huge smile. “I know. She’s just like them, way too good for this cruel world. I don’t know how she does it, how she kept that … spark of cheerfulness alive in her heart. But she must have done it in spite of me, not because of me. I could never be a real parent to her.”

“Have you tried?” Sunset asked simply.

Alphabittle took one more look at Izzy, stood a little bit taller and turned to face Sunset again. “I’m going to, starting right now. … Well, starting tomorrow by taking her to an optician.” He held out his hand towards her. “Thank you, Ms. Shimmer. It’s good to know someone else is looking out for Izzy.”

Sunset smiled and shook the offered hand. “That makes two of us. Goodnight, Mr. Blossomforth.”

As she got into her car and drove off into the night, the lights of the small house slowly fading into the distance in her rear view mirror, Sunset couldn’t help but hum to herself. A smile and a song came to her lips that she hadn’t been able to bring herself to sing in two years. But now it was coming back to her, and she couldn’t resist the urge to sing it in her car as she drove through the quiet night with Izzy’s smiling face still fresh in her memory.

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Gold Tier:
-Daedalus Aegle

Sunset Shimmer stretched her arm to the side and turned her upper body until she heard something pop. “Oh, ouch, I haven’t done this in way too long,” she muttered under her breath as she lightly jogged along the gravel path that ran around the perimeter of Canterlot Central Park.

She’d woken up early this Saturday morning for some reason and decided that it would have been a shame to let this sunny late autumn weather go to waste. So she’d thrown on some old sports clothes and made her way to the park, only for her body to loudly complain that she hadn’t properly exercised like this in over a year and that it was pretty chilly in the air despite the sun being out.

The latter problem had solved itself after ten minutes or so of running, but the former remained an ongoing and occasionally painful process. “How do professional athletes do this day in and day out?” she asked no one in particular.

As if to answer that question, someone in a light blue hoodie came jogging towards her in the opposite direction, and her smile grew as she recognized the rainbow colored hair tied into a ponytail. The figure returned the smile, and they both stopped, jogging in place, when they crossed paths.

“Oh my stars,” Sunset marveled in mock amazement, “is that the hot, new striker of the Canterlot Wondercolts on a game-free Saturday? Why, she must be looking for benches she can warm here in the park.”

“Har, har,” Rainbow Dash replied dryly, “make your little jokes while you can. But you better keep up to do it.” Turning around, she started jogging back the way she came.

Chuckling, Sunset caught up and said: “How’s it been going, Rainbow?”

“I’m doing some extra training on my own time. There’s this indoor tournament for charity coming up around Christmas. The regulars don’t like to play cause they’re afraid of unnecessary injuries. But if I show my stuff there, I’ll have a starter spot by spring, mark my words.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“What’s it like being back at school?” Rainbow asked with a grin. “You can make fun of me for not getting to play in the important games all you want. But you went through five years of higher education just to wind up right back in high school.”

“It’s been an … interesting transition,” Sunset replied after a moment’s thought. “I’m seeing sides of our old teachers they didn’t dare show us when we were students. Did you know that Principal Celestia has a sense of humor?”

Rainbow laughed. “She sure kept it hidden well. But how about you?” Rainbow wiggled her eyebrows. “You get any male students writing you love letters yet?”

“What?” Sunset blushed. “Don’t be silly. That doesn’t happen in real life.”

Rainbow looked her friend up and down. “You go to school in that, it will.”

Checking over her sports get-up of black leggings and orange tank top, Sunset replied: “I’ve been wearing this since college. A teacher’s salary leaves little margin for brand sports clothes. It’s all I can do to keep my rust bucket of a car running.” Shifting her shoulders uncomfortably, she added in regards to her clothes: “I guess it’s gotten a little tight over the years.”

“I’ll say,” Rainbow quipped, “you look like you’re about to pop right out of it, or at least certain parts of you are.” She gave a suggestive look below Sunset’s eye line.

Blushing more deeply, Sunset grumbled in reply: “Where’s this coming from, gossip girl? I expect this kind of talk from Rarity, not from you.”

Rainbow groaned. “You try sitting on a bench for three months during games and not start reading trashy romance novels you smuggle in your sports bag to pass the time. But at least it seems to pay better than being a public servant.” She elbowed Sunset and indicated a cart near the green of the park. “Come on, poor teacher lady. My treat.”

Sunset didn’t complain, since it gave her the excuse to catch her breath while being spared the humiliation of having to ask Rainbow to slow down.

Rainbow, who wasn’t gasping in the least, went up to the smoothie cart. “Yo, you have anything in the range of a sports drink with some protein?”

“Sure thing.” The young girl in the cart turned, looked over and then her eyes went wide. “Ms. Sunset!”

“Sunny?” Sunset took a step back and looked at the sign. “Wait, you actually run a smoothie stand? That wasn’t just some excuse you came up with when I cornered you?”

Sunny gave her a sheepish smile. “Uh, yeah. I actually left it unattended when I ran away from you at the mall the other day. Got an earful from my dad for that afterward. So, what’ll it be?”

“Gimme a strawberry, I guess.”

“You two know each other?” Rainbow asked in response to that exchange.

“Yeah, she’s one of my students.”

Sunny put two smoothies down on the counter and in that moment really took a good look at Rainbow for the first time. “Whoa! You’re the speedster one! Can I ask you something? When you run so fast that you leave a rainbow trail, does your magic actually slow down everything around you from your perspective or do you have to think as fast as you run?”

Rainbow, in the process of reaching for her smoothie, froze in place and turned her head to stare at Sunset.

Sunset rolled her eyes. “It’s alright, she knows.”

“Seriously?” Rainbow asked with that crack in her voice. “You’re the one always telling us not to talk about this stuff in public.”

“I kinda had to. She was there when the Maretime Bay incident happened.”

Rainbow scratched the back of her head. “Oh. We kinda went out with a bang there, didn’t we?” Leaning closer in towards her friend, she added in a conspiratorial whisper: “How much exactly did you tell her?”

“Well, it all kinda came tumbling out when the dam broke. Didn’t leave out much,” Sunset mumbled.

“You told her everything?”

Sunset thought about that for a moment. “Let’s say I told her the PG-13 version. How about that?”

Rainbow turned back towards Sunny, who was looking at her expectantly, and grabbed her smoothie. “No, time didn’t slow down for me. Ran headlong into a lot of walls when I was first figuring things out.”

At that moment, the door at the back of the smoothie cart opened, and a man with purple mutton chops and wearing a dark vest carried in a basket of fresh fruit.

“Dad,” Sunny said turning towards him, “come over here a moment. I want you to meet my teacher.”

The man looked over at them across his rimless glasses, and a look of recognition crossed over his face as he laid eyes on Sunset. “You must be Ms. Shimmer,” he said, holding out his hand in greeting with a smile, “Sunny has told me a lot about you. Argyle Starshine. Pleasure to meet you.”

Sunset took the offered hand and replied: “The pleasure’s all mine, sir. Your daughter is one of my best students.”

He nodded with pride and looked at both Sunset and Rainbow Dash. “And may I say thank you for saving my hometown from … whatever that magical artifact was that caused all that trouble years ago.”

Now it was Sunset’s turn to freeze mid-handshake. She glared darkly at her student.

“I know what you’re gonna say,” Sunny said immediately, holding up her hands, “but I have two things to say in my defense: Firstly, I specifically recall you saying that I couldn’t tell anyone at school about magic. Secondly, you said that I had a right to know based on the fact I was there. Well, so was my dad.”

Sunset turned her glare towards Rainbow Dash when she heard a snort-chuckle next to her. “I mean, she’s got you there,” the athlete said, slurping on her smoothie. “Kid’s either gonna be a lawyer or a sports agent when she grows up.”

“Don’t worry, Ms. Shimmer,” Argyle said, “your secret is safe with me.”

Sunset sighed and nodded, taking her own smoothie. “What do we owe you for these?”

“Oh, please,” he replied, waving it off, “it’s on the house for the saviors of Maretime Bay, not to mention two fellow Canterlot U alums.”

“Dad’s actually got a history degree,” Sunny chimed in.

“You don’t say?” Sunset said in surprise. “What’s your specialty?”

“Ancient Greece,” he replied, “hey, did you ever get Professor Zotz in one of your lectures? Is he still teaching?”

Sunset chuckled. “I mean, yeah, those parts of his classes who can manage to stay awake at least. Did he always drone on in such a monotonous voice?”

“He sure did,” Argyle replied with a nostalgic look in his eyes.

Sunset frowned. “If you don’t mind me asking, why are you running a smoothie stand if you have a university degree?”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t cut out for a university career or teaching. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what job prospects are like outside those two options with a humanities degree.”

Sunset simply gave an understanding smile and a sympathetic nod. “Oh yeah, it was either this or sushi waitress for me.”

“My research wasn’t going anywhere, and there came a point where a steady income with regular hours became more important.” Sunset noted the sideways glance full of love directed at his daughter with the latter part of that statement.

She nodded. “A job is a job. Those are hard to come by these days.” She took a drink from her smoothie. “And this is really good.”

He smiled in return, then looked over her shoulder into the distance where the barking of some dogs could be heard. “Sunny,” he said, “isn’t that your friend Hitch?”

The group turned to see a green-haired boy leading what seemed to be a dozen dogs towards the center of the park. Sunny nodded. “Oh yeah, he must be working as a dog walker again.” She raised an arm to wave and shouted: “Hitch!”

“Sunny,” Argyle said in what seemed to Sunset a more subdued voice than what he had been using. “Why don’t you take your break and go say hi?”

“If you can manage, dad.”

He nodded with a smile, and Sunny gave him a kiss on the cheek before exiting the cart and running over towards her friend and classmate.

Argyle kept his eyes on her until she was out of earshot, then turned to stare at Sunset, all traces of his jovial nature suddenly gone. Suddenly, Sunset felt very self-conscious about her choice of exercise clothes as she was mustered by a parent of one of her students. “I must say, Ms. Shimmer, you either have a very good poker face or you really don’t recognize my name.”

Stunned, Sunset took a moment and her mind subconsciously dug back into a piece of her past she didn’t like to think about too much. Her eyes widened at the realization. “New Evidence of Pre-Minoan Settlements and Burial Rituals on Crete,” she cited from memory.

He nodded. “So you do know. Although that paper was never published. The editor literally laughed us out of his office.”

“Well, I’ve got a friend who is a bit of a tech whiz,” Sunset explained. “She dug up a copy of the draft on the Canterlot U servers back then. You’re one of the three people who discovered the Horn of Sombra, aren’t you?”

Argyle couldn’t help but shake his head and let a dry chuckle escape his throat. “Horn of Sombra. Certainly sounds more dramatic than Artifact 35-A.”

Rainbow Dash looked between the two of them in confusion, then said: “This is starting to sound like an egghead conversation about something I thought I left behind. I think I’d rather continue my run if it’s all the same to you.” She gave Sunset a penetrating look. “You good here?” she asked while her eyes added: Is this something we need to be concerned about? Do you need backup? I’ll stay if you ask me to.

“We’re good, Rainbow,” Sunset replied. “Text me those details for the Christmas tournament later. I’ll get the girls together, and we’ll come cheer you on.”

Rainbow Dash gave Argyle another sideways glance, then nodded, punched Sunset in the shoulder and resumed her jog.

There was a long silence before Sunset could think of something appropriate to say. “I’m sorry about Professor Discerning Eye. I was actually signed up to take one of his classes the next semester when it happened. Never got a chance to meet him.”

Argyle rested his elbows on the counter and stared wistfully into the distance. “You would have liked him. Good teacher, firm with his students but also really invested in their future. I wish we’d never found this damn dig site. I might still have a career and he’d probably be alive.”

“Did the police ever find out who did it?”

Argyle gave her a look and sighed. “They’ve never arrested anyone, but if you ask them, nine out of ten would probably point at me. He didn’t have any family, and nobody outside the dig team knew about Artifact 35-A. So when someone broke into his home, killed him and the only thing missing was the artifact, I was the prime suspect. I don’t know how many times they questioned me about it.”

Sunset took another drink from her smoothie. “I believe you’re innocent, for what it’s worth. I remember pulling you free from that Shadow Colossus back then, and there wasn’t a trace of dark magic on you. There definitely would have been if you’d activated the Horn of Sombra.”

He laughed ruefully. “That’s what I should have said then. ‘Your Honor, a forensic search for dark magic residue will prove my innocence, or at least be the first step in my insanity defense.’ Also, Shadow Colossus?”

“Well, that’s what we unofficially dubbed it back then. The big one that came from the harbor Shadow Colossus, the smaller ones rampaging in the streets Shadow Puppets. We never did figure out what exactly those entities were, only that they were released from the Horn.” Sunset closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “I know you have questions, too. We weren’t able to follow up on everything as … other things preoccupied us in the aftermath of the Maretime Bay incident. There’s just so much we still don’t know. We were never able to track down the last name on that research paper for example. What was their name?”

“Bright Hope,” Argyle supplied after a moment, “she was one of Professor Eye’s postgraduate students just like I was. I haven’t seen her since the incident. She all but vanished from the face of the Earth.”

After a moment’s thought, Sunset asked delicately: “Do you think she could have …?” She left it hanging there, the implication speaking for itself.

Argyle straightened, taken aback. “Kill the professor? … No.” He shook his head and repeated more resolutely: “No. She could be difficult to work with, ambitious to a fault, but she was my friend. And she loved the professor as much as I did. She could never hurt him.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Sunset replied carefully, “but I’ve seen what the presence of a powerful magical artifact can do to a person, how that … temptation can warp the mind, even felt it myself. There’s only a handful of people who would have known about the artifact. So if I were the police, even discounting what I know, the woman who vanished would look a lot more suspicious to me than the guy who stayed behind.”

His response was somewhat clipped. “Ms. Shimmer, I’m grateful to you for saving my life, and my daughter tells me you’re a wonderful teacher. But I’d thank you not to pursue this train of thought any further in my presence. This is still my friend you’re talking about, and I can’t blame her for wanting to leave everything that happened behind and not look back, even if it’s not what I did.”

Even without her magic, Sunset could see on his face that he’d probably contemplated this and other possibilities while lying awake in the small hours of the morning. “I apologize, Mr. Starshine. I meant no offense.”

Argyle took a deep breath, relaxing his shoulders and shaking his head. “None taken. This is who we are, you and I. We’re both students of history, and when the past refuses to give up a satisfactory answer, we will keep picking at it until it does, for better or worse.”

They both turned as they heard a bark in the distance and watched for a while. Hitch had let the dogs off their leashes, and, far from what could be expected, they all seemed to behave as they swarmed around him.

Hitch himself was picking up pieces of litter from the grass while Sunny was petting one of the dogs and chatting away with her friend. A Great Dane came up towards Hitch with something held in its mouth and wagging its tail. Hitch gave the dog a pat on the head as he took the object, seemingly an empty plastic bottle, and threw it in the nearby trashcan along with the stuff he’d picked up.

Sunset began to smile while watching her students. “Maybe you’re right. But our past is not today,” she said, not turning back to look at Argyle.

He thought about that for a moment, then settled back into his comfortable position with his elbows on the counter as he looked over and also began watching his daughter and her friend play in the park. “Our past is not today,” he repeated softly. “I like that.”

With that, they settled into a comfortable silence while Sunset finished her drink.

Brought to you by my generous patreon supporter(s):

Gold Tier:
-Daedalus Aegle

As Sunset walked into her history class on Monday, she was immediately headed off by one of her students. “Izzy,” she said with a smile, “I like it. Looks very you.”

Izzy grinned beneath her new clear frame glasses, the sides of which had already been decorated with some glitter and a sticker depicting some balloons. “Thank you, Ms. Sunset.” She held out a glasses case. “I won’t be needing these anymore. Thanks for letting me borrow them.”

Sunset took the case and nodded before proceeding to the teacher’s desk. “Good morning, my loyal subjects,” she told Class 2-A.

“Good morning, Your Majesty,” the students responded jokingly.

She leaned against her desk, grinning. “Right, I’ve taught you well.” This was then followed by an overly dramatic sigh. “Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. I can’t keep hogging all the cake for myself and I’ve been known to lose my head. Who can tell me what I’m talking about?”

Zipp raised her hand. “Viva la revolution!”

“Correct,” Sunset said, noting the lack of chalk in the tray without surprise and pulling a piece of her dwindling personal supply out of her pocket. She wrote three numbers on the blackboard. 1789, 1848 and 1917. She then pointed at the three rows of desks in turn: “Windownia French Revolution, Aislandia German Revolution and Free Cities you got the Russian Revolution. I want you to open your books and prepare a short summary for your assigned revolution. In twenty minutes, one of each group will explain what they’ve learned to the rest of the class and then we’ll compare how those revolutions resembled each other and how they differed from each other. Begin!” Sunset clapped her hands together once and noted with satisfaction how everyone dutifully opened their books and started on their assignments without complaint.

Sitting down at her desk, she picked up the glasses case and noted something rattling within. Curious, she opened it to find a handmade charm bracelet in addition to Twilight’s old glasses. She looked up to find Izzy watching her intently. Smiling, Sunset slipped the bracelet onto her left wrist, holding it upfor a second, and winked at her student.

After beaming with joy for a moment, Izzy returned to her book.

Five minutes passed, and the sound of pens and pencils on paper began to lull a bit, so Sunset decided this was a good time to employ some proximity teaching, getting up to have a walk around the classroom.

She came to a stop next to her newest student. “Misty,” she said, “may I see your book for a moment?”

Even though Sunset had spoken quietly, she’d still managed to startle Misty who looked up at her with wide eyes, but picked up her history book to hold it out.

Sunset noted the crackling spine and weathered pages as she turned to the front page, zoning in on the publication date. “This is a very old edition, Misty. It’s not really up to date anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” Misty said very quietly. “It’s all they had at the used book shop. New books are expensive.”

Sunset frowned. “I agree, and it doesn’t have to be fresh off the printing press. But this is nearly twenty years old and several editions back. This would have been out of date when I went to school here. I need to know you’ve got the right page number and question when I give an assignment from the book. I want you to go see Ms. Cheerilee at the library before our next lesson. I’m sure she can give you a loaner that’s newer than this for the semester. As for right now …”

Having heard the conversation from her desk right in front of Misty, Sunny turned around. “We can share my book.”

“There you go,” Sunset said, giving Sunny a smile. “Why don’t you sit next to Sunny for today?”

“O-okay,” Misty replied hesitantly, pulling up a chair next to Sunny and adding even more quietly: “Thanks.”

Sunset nodded and clasped her hands behind her back to continue her rounds. She didn’t even break her stride as she got Pipp to put her phone away with a precision glare. Pivoting around the back of the class, she continued on until she stood behind Sprout, looking over his shoulder.

Her momentary hope at seeing him with his head down and moving his pencil gave way to a frown when she realized that he was actually sketching something behind the history book he’d propped up as a blind in front of him.

“Would you like to share your artwork with the rest of the class?” Sunset asked, snatching up the paper.

Sprout’s head whipped around and he looked at her with a horrified expression. Putting his hand up to snatch back the paper, he brought it back and put it in front of his mouth.

Sunset looked at the sketch with a raised eyebrow and began blushing furiously before folding the piece of paper quickly in half so nobody else would see it. “This isn’t art class, Sprout,” she said after clearing her throat.

With the moment of panic receding, Sprout moved his arm around to rub the back of his neck. “Sorry, Ms. Sunset. Won’t happen again,” he said, trying to sound apologetic in an attempt to mitigate the infraction.

That’s when Sunset spotted it, a white substance clinging to the edge of his letter jacket sleeve, and she grabbed it before he could put his hand down again. Turning the sleeve over several times, she gave him a hard stare.

“Uhm, that is, I mean,” he stammered and Sunset held the gaze until his eyes darted in a certain direction, giving away the game.

Nudging Sprout’s pencil case, Sunset calmly picked up the box of chalk that had been hidden underneath it and held it up in front of his face.

“That,” Sprout said weakly, “I, erm, I was gonna give that to you. Yeah. I picked it up from the supply room cause you’re always so low on chalk, Ms. Sunset.”

Others might have called it a cool smile under the circumstances, Sunset called it what it was. She was baring her fangs at him. “How thoughtful of you, Sprout,” she said in a sweet voice that carried enough of an edge to cut steel. “I’ve got a present for you, too.” With that, she pulled out a detention slip and slammed it down on the desk in front of him. “I’ll see you in the afternoon.”

Taking the box of chalk with her, Sunset turned and continued her class as Sprout sank deep enough into his chair as to almost vanish under his desk.

During lunch, Sunset sat with her elbows propped up on the table in the teachers’ lounge and pouted, her head held in her hands and blushing like a tomato as her fellow teachers passed the paper around and laughed uproariously. “Why I thought it was a good idea to ask the lot of you for advice, I’ll never know.”

“Relax, kid,” Cranky said, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye and letting out the last of his chuckles, “if nothing else, it should tell you not to worry about it. This isn’t even a blip on the radar after you’ve done this job for a while.”

Harshwhinny, who was sitting at the table with Cranky and Sunset, picked up the paper and looked it over one more time with a smile. “Also, you can’t be too upset at it. This is really more on the flattering end of the spectrum as far as these things go.”

Time Turner, who was standing behind Harshwhinny stole one last glance. “I think Gladys is right. He’s a pretty good artist, that one.” He turned to Cranky and added: “Are we gonna call it then?”

The acting vice-principal nodded and addressed the room at large. “I guess so. Who had eight weeks in the betting pool until a student drew a nudie picture of Sunset?”

A hand was raised up over on the couch. “Eyup.”

“Big Mac!” Sunset said accusingly.

The gym teacher simply shrugged as he started collecting from the other teachers present.

“Relax, Sunset,” Cheerilee said while handing over a fiver to him, “it’s happened to all of us, men and women alike.”

Sunset narrowed her eyes at him. “So that means somewhere exists a naked picture of you drawn by a love-struck high school girl.”

“Ey… maybe?”

“Guard your briefcase well, Big Macintosh,” she told him flatly. “I will make it my mission in life to find that picture and show it to AJ.”

Cheerilee chuckled at that. “What makes you think that someone hasn’t already snapped a picture of that art piece and sent it to her?”

Big Mac glared at her but said nothing after he’d collected his winnings while she simply stuck out her tongue at him impishly.

That interaction almost made Sunset feel better, but she turned back around to Cranky and Harshwhinny, who she’d grudgingly accepted to be good sources for advice in spite of the snark. “Seriously though, what am I supposed to do about this?”

“There’s nothing to be done, Sunset,” Gladys replied simply. “Have you looked in a mirror lately? Look again through the eyes of a 15-year-old boy. It’s gonna happen, and he’s not gonna be the only one.”

“Yeah,” Cranky concurred, “unless you plan on teaching from behind a curtain from now on, age is really the only thing that’ll eventually put a stop to it.”

“Speak for yourself,” Gladys said with a smirk. “I’m in the MILF Goldilocks zone right now. It’s about the only ego boost I get now and then.”

“Look, he can’t help being a horny teenager, I get that,” Sunset went on with a sigh, “but Sprout’s not the sharpest tool in the shed to put it mildly. How’s he gonna learn anything in my class if the person teaching him is his biggest distraction?”

“These things don’t last forever, Sunset,” Cranky pointed out. “You gave him detention, right?”

Leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms, Sunset mused: “I’m not sure that I haven’t given him what he wanted all along, more time to ogle me. Why pull the stunt with all the chalk otherwise?”

Gladys nodded. “They sometimes do that, cause trouble on purpose to get sent to detention. But the illusion will fade pretty quickly once they realize that it’s not gonna go the way the internet makes it out to be.” She drummed her fingers on the table for a few moments and then offered: “Do you want me to take over detention this afternoon for you, honey?”

As one, the entire faculty present looked up and stared at Ms. Harshwhinny in silence.

“You’re … in a good mood today, Gladys,” Sunset said carefully, equally as perplexed as her colleagues at the offer.

Ms. Harshwhinny tapped her phone. “I’ve got a date this weekend thanks to tweaking my profile a bit. I figure I owe you one.”

Sunset closed her eyes for a moment before slowly shaking her head. “Thanks anyway, Gladys. But if what you said is true, I had better bite the bullet sooner and dispel any illusions that Rule 34 is part of the school regulations.”

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Gold Tier:
-Daedalus Aegle

“Why not?” Sunset demanded, spreading out her arms.

“Because I said so,” Celestia replied calmly, sitting behind her desk.

Sunset crossed her arms and looked at her boss. “I’m not one of your students anymore, Celestia. That answer’s not good enough.”

“I gave you a proper answer already. I don’t put first year teachers in charge of clubs as a matter of policy. You’ve still got things to learn about how this job works, and you’re already stretched thin by teaching your German elective plus the AP History class you’re doing for the seniors.”

“This isn’t about me,” Sunset countered and stood up from the chair in Celestia’s office to vent her frustration, “the drama club was Luna’s baby since before I got here. Are you really gonna let it die while she’s not even here to defend it?”

Celestia steepled her fingers together and refused to meet Sunset’s eyes while answering. “I know Luna won’t be happy about it, but she’ll understand my decision when I explain it to her.”

“I know there’s only two of them, but how is the club gonna get back on its feet if you don’t give them an advisor?” Sunset was nearly pleading at this point. “Even if it’s just Pipp and Rufus, this is important to them. So there’s not enough members for a play, but I can run them through some improv exercises and help them recruit members for next year. Why not keep the ball rolling? I’m here. Just put me in until Luna comes back, coach.”

Celestia looked back at her with a raised eyebrow. “Coach?”

Sunset wobbled her head a bit before replying: “Ran into Dash the other day. You know what I mean. I can handle it. I know you’re not this person, Celestia. You’re not a Saturday morning cartoon villain who’ll stamp on their students’ hopes and dreams just because the plot demands it. So why?”

The principal sighed and rubbed her eyes before giving Sunset a genuinely pained look. “Sunset, I love seeing you fight for your students like that, barely a few weeks into your tenure at this school. It honestly makes me so proud of the woman you’ve become. Twenty years ago, I might have been standing exactly where you are right now, having it out with my old principal. But the harsh truth is, things look different from an administrator’s perspective than they do from a teacher’s.”

“How?”

“Do I really have to spell it out for you?” Celestia gave a stern look. “Money. And don’t pretend like you don’t know it. You admitted to me on your first day that you would have loved to teach at Crystal Prep. So would I. But CHS is a public school, and I’m not Cadence. I can’t just call up a wealthy parent and ask them to conjure up some extra funding out of thin air. If I leave the drama club in place, we pay more insurance for the use of the auditorium, play or not. It means I have to ask for funds from the school board, even if the club only exists on paper, which means less money in the budget for necessities like the refurbishment of the bathrooms or new equipment for the chemistry lab.”

“This never used to be a problem when I was a student here.”

“Or maybe you never realized it because you didn’t have the full picture as a student,” Celestia pointed out. “Pay no attention to the wizard behind the curtain.”

Sunset took a few deep breaths, as if to marshal a new set of arguments, but she wasn’t able to get another word in as Celestia sat up straight and adopted a hard look in a rare display of authority, reminding Sunset through sheer body language who was the boss here and who was the new hire.

“Ms. Shimmer, this conversation is going around in circles. I have made my decision, and that decision is final. Now, I believe you have some detention to oversee.”

In a new personal best, Sunset straightened her spine and weathered that look for a full three seconds before her shoulders slumped slightly. “… Yes, Principal.”

Sunset walked through the halls, slowing her step deliberately in an attempt to let go of her frustration before she entered the classroom where detention was being held. Finally, she stopped altogether and pulled out her phone, opening a new group chat with three of her friends. She shot off a quick initial message: “Sparky, Rares, AJ. I need a favor from each of you. Can we meet at SCC this weekend? My treat.”

That done, she took a deep breath and entered the classroom. She was greeted by two more contrite faces than she expected to see.

“Hitch, what are you doing here?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

He slumped a little. “Mr. Macintosh caught me trying to sneak out before P.E. class.”

“Uh-huh. How about you, Rufus?”

“I’m here because Mr. Turner doesn’t appreciate showmanship,” Rufus replied archly.

“Showmanship.” Sunset dead-panned.

“Indeed. Apparently he couldn’t see the artistic value in the smoke bomb I used to enhance his physics experiment.”

Sunset shook her head. “And apparently your cousin needs to give you some remedial lessons on the sleight-of-hand part of your craft, … not that she was any good at it when she was your age. Alright, do some homework, you two. As for you,” she said, pointing at Sprout, “you’re gonna write me a 500 word essay on why it is you think you’re here.”

Fidgeting a little in his seat and not meeting Sunset’s eyes, Sprout asked: “Would this be about the chalk thing or …?”

Sunset placed her hand on his desk and leaned in, forcing the boy to look up at her. “What do you think?” she growled in a low volume. “Also, the word count just went up to 750.”

Sprout coughed and took out his writing pad. “Right, I’ll just cover all the bases,” he said and put his head down to start writing.

She could see Hitch turn around with a curious look and mouth the words “What did you do?” at him from the corner of her eyes.

Rubbing her eyes, Sunset withdrew to the teacher’s desk and sat down. Waiting a couple minutes, she realized that the three troublemakers were actually getting on with their assignments and wouldn’t need to be called to order at least for the time being. Glancing at the clock, she cringed a little at how long she’d be here and took out the piece of paper she’d confiscated earlier in the day from her pocket.

Sunset regarded the sketch for a good while, actually really looking at it for the first time. The fact that the subject of the sketch was clearly recognizable with barely a glance coupled with the other teachers’ comments sparked the artist in her to give it an objective look. And she had to admit to herself that, setting aside how inappropriate it was, it was actually rather tasteful and showed some innate talent.

“By the way, Sprout,” she said about fifteen minutes into detention in spite of herself, unable to keep herself from dispensing some advice to a budding artist. “Your linework is pretty solid, but your shading technique still has room for improvement. Maybe try a mechanical pencil for your crosshatching next time and really think about where your light source is.”

Sprout looked up, saw the piece of paper in Sunset’s hands, blushed and doubled his writing pace.

Putting the sketch away, Sunset was about to pull out her phone to see if any of her friends had responded yet when a loud screeching noise and a crash could suddenly be heard from the outside, followed by the sound of a car engine revving. She turned to look, but could only make out the tail lights of a car speeding off.

Hitch on the other hand, who was sitting in a window seat, bolted upright as he looked out towards the street. After a moment, he opened the window, put his foot on the windowsill and jumped out of the ground floor classroom.

Flabbergasted, Sunset got up and opened the window closest to her. “Hey! I’m the only one who gets to jump out of windows around here!” After she’d shouted that, she let actions follow words and vaulted over the windowsill. “Hitch, what do you think you’re doing?” she asked as she caught up to her student.

Having dropped to his knees on the curb next to the road, Hitch turned toward her with something cradled in his arms, and now Sunset could see what had spurred him on. It was a small dog, blood matting his pale green fur and whimpering in pain.

“Oh.” Kneeling down beside him, she reached out a hand. Half-closed purple eyes looked at her in a pained expression as a wet nose touched her knuckle before retreating again.

“What’s going on?”

Sunset turned when she heard Rufus’ voice and saw the other two boys coming to join them, fighting the urge to facepalm at seeing yet another classroom window open.

“Ms. Sunset, he’s hurt bad,” Hitch said as the other two knelt down to take in the situation.

Rufus looked up at Sunset. “We’ve got to help him, Ms. Sunset.”

“Should I get Nurse Redheart?” Sprout asked.

Sunset was staring at the road, trying to catch another glimpse of the hit-and-run driver, but the car was long gone. “She’s already gone home for the day.” Sunset looked at the three boys who seemed at a loss of what to do and turned on her heel. “Wait here.”

She couldn’t have recounted her sprint to the parking lot later if she’d tried to, but she’d brought her car around in less than a minute, opening the trunk to get out a blanket to wrap the dog up in. Hitch was simply staring at the dog and all the blood.

“Hitch!” Sunset barked in a tone that brooked no argument and snapped her fingers in front of him while simultaneously trying to recall her mandatory first aid course and apply that knowledge to a dog as best she could. “Look at me. Keep him warm, keep his head turned to the side and try not to let him move too much. Rufus, show me your hands.”

Wordlessly, Rufus held out his arms and Sunset rooted around his sleeves until she found what she was looking for, a set of colorful handkerchiefs knotted together which she placed on what seemed to be the deepest wound.

“Keep pressure on it to stop the blood flow as best you can,” she instructed while putting his hands over the cloth. “Everybody in the car!”

She drove off as soon as her three students had piled into the Ford Fiesta and closed the doors, then said to Sprout, who had taken the front seat next to her: “Reach into the inside pocket of my jacket and grab my phone.”

“Right.” Sprout reached out gingerly to move the side of Sunset’s leather jacket.

“Other side,” Sunset said while keeping her eyes on the road.

It took a moment until she could see him reach out across her chest. Just then, she had to turn a corner and she could feel the back of his hand brush against her bust. “Sorry, sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean to!” he blubbered, pulling back immediately.

She looked at him from the corner of her eye, all flustered and wide-eyed. “Focus, Sprout,” she said calmly as the situation she’d found herself in overrode any embarrassment in her brain. “Just get the phone. I need you to find the entry called ‘Flutters’ in the contacts and make a call.”

Swallowing hard, he nodded and reached out again, finding the cellphone and navigating the menu after retrieving it. He put it on speaker without prompting after dialing the number and held it out towards Sunset while it rang.

“Come on, pick up,” she muttered under her breath.

There was a moment of static followed by a very quiet voice. “Sunset? This isn’t a good time. I’m still at work.”

“That’s what I was counting on, Fluttershy. I’ve got a dog that’s been hit by a car in the backseat, and I’m about five minutes out from your clinic.”

The change at the other end of the line was as apparent as it was immediate, the soft near-whisper changing to a clearly audible no-nonsense attitude. “Right. What are the injuries?”

“Talk to my student,” Sunset replied and jerked her head, indicating for Sprout to pass the phone to the backseat.

Sunset barely glanced back as she heard a frantic shuffle, the phone having been dropped as she hit a speed bump. She could hear Rufus going “Got it!” before Sprout demanded her attention, shouting “Light!”

Sunset saw the yellow light, made a split-second decision and floored the accelerator, her little car revving up to cross the intersection in between honking horns from either side. “I better not hear about any of you driving like this when you take your driving test next year,” she said while grimacing.

“Hello? Are you still there? There’s a lot of blood,” Hitch said breathlessly into the cellphone that Rufus was holding up for him while cradling the dog.

“Calm down, young man,” Fluttershy’s voice said in a calm yet firm manner amidst the static. “What’s your name?”

“Hitch, ma’am.”

“Hitch, take a deep breath. Sunset’s gonna get you where you need to go. In the meantime, tell me what you can. Start with what you can see.”

A couple of minutes later, Sunset’s car screeched to a halt in front of a building downtown with the words ‘Canterlot Animal Clinic’ written across the glass double doors. Sprout and Rufus held the doors open as Sunset helped Hitch gingerly carry their patient inside.

At their entrance, a woman with long pink hair and wearing a white lab coat looked up and hung up the phone. “Doctor, they’re here!” she called towards a backroom from the reception desk and went to meet Sunset and her students halfway into the waiting area. She took out a small flashlight and began inspecting the quivering bundle in Hitch’s arms. “Alright, tell me where it hurts.”

Sunset saw her friend clutch a pendant hanging in front of her chest and knew instinctively that Fluttershy was prone to the same habit she’d found herself in when she wished she could fall back on her old magic.

A few moments later a bespectacled man of middle age, also clad in a white coat, joined her. “What have we got, Ms. Fluttershy?”

“Pupils normal, no sign of a concussion. Blunt force trauma to the left side, probably broken front paw. Large laceration above the left shoulder blade amidst other smaller cuts.”

He nodded, moving some of the fur aside where she had indicated. “Looks worse than it is. I don’t think it nicked any arteries.”

“He said he’s having trouble breathing,” Hitch suddenly spoke up.

Fluttershy looked up startled, meeting Sunset’s eyes who furrowed her brow at the choice of words. They both looked at Hitch again.

“I mean,” he began, trying to express his thoughts, “he was whimpering when we got in the car, but then he went quiet. I could hear some gurgling.”

A look passed between the doctor and Fluttershy and she muttered a soothing “I know, it hurts, bear with me, puppy,” as the dog whimpered beneath her ginger touch, looking to confirm something. “Third rib.”

The doctor nodded, going over his patient with the stethoscope. “Must have punctured a lung. It’s filling up with blood. Good catch, young man.” He paused and pushed up his glasses. “Who’s the owner?”

The boys looked at each other uncertainly, until Hitch said: “I think he’s a stray. I’ve seen him around the school grounds once or twice.”

There was a long sigh from the man. “We can try to operate, but I’m giving him 50-50 odds. Normally, I’d leave it up to the owner to decide. It might be kinder to just give him something to go to sleep. For a stray …” He left it hanging there, scratching the back of his neck.

The moment that followed felt like an eternity to Sunset as the three teenagers stood there in worry and confusion while the three adults in the room knew exactly what he was getting at, Sunset doubly so after her earlier conversation with Celestia. The thought of crushing her students with the reality of the situation after they’d acted so admirably, and just when the finish line was in sight, almost broke her heart. She found herself saying it before she’d finished the thought: “I’m the owner.”

The doctor looked at her. “So he’s not a stray then?”

Sunset shook her head. “Not as of ten seconds ago, he isn’t. Please try to save him.”

He held her gaze for a moment to confirm something and then nodded resolutely. “Very well. Ms. Fluttershy, get the patient prepped and x-rayed while I get the OR and anesthetics ready. Scrub in and meet me there when you’re done.”

Fluttershy looked up at the taller man and gulped. “You mean?”

He nodded. “You’ve been itching to assist during a surgery since you got here. Today’s the day. I’m gonna need a second pair of hands on this one.”

Sunset could see the momentary panic behind her friend’s eyes which was quickly replaced by a steely resolve. “Yes, doctor.”

Fluttershy took the dog carefully from Hitch and turned towards the double doors in the back while the doctor held them open for her before following behind.

Sunset and her students stood silently in the waiting area as the adrenaline crash washed over them, leaving them with a sudden exhaustion.

A voice broke the silence eventually. “Don’t worry, boys.” They turned to see an elderly woman they hadn’t noticed earlier sitting in the waiting area next to a carrying box that held a rotund tabby cat. The cat regarded them with that supreme indifference only a feline was capable of, but the woman smiled a reassuring smile at them. “Dr. Paws is the best there is in Canterlot, and that Ms. Fluttershy is young, but she knows what she’s doing.”

Sunset smiled at the woman and gently laid a hand on Hitch’s shoulder. “Hitch,” she said, indicating the door to the restroom with a nod of her head, “why don’t you go get yourself cleaned up?”

The boy looked down on himself, seemingly noticing for the first time that his hands and shirt were covered in blood. “Right,” he said quietly and walked off.

Rufus and Sprout were still staring at the doors Fluttershy and the doctor had vanished through, and Sunset cleared her throat to get their attention. She fished a bank note out of her pocket and handed it to the boys. “Here’s twenty bucks. There’s a thrift store around the corner. See if you can find some clean clothes for Hitch to change into. I’ll wait here.”

They had returned ten minutes later with a pair of jeans and an over-sized Power Ponies t-shirt that made Hitch look ridiculous coupled with the letter jacket Sprout had also lent him. But at least he didn’t look like he’d stepped out of a slasher movie anymore.

The large clock in the waiting area ticked by as fifteen minutes became half an hour and then an entire hour. Sunset sat stoically and mostly silently. She hated sitting and waiting for something that was out of her hands as a matter of principle. But this place … She wondered how Fluttershy could stand working here. It was a little different, of course, but the waiting area and the smell of disinfectant reminded her far too much of Canterlot General Hospital, threatening to bring memories to the forefront that she dared not show in front of her three young students.

The boys mostly fidgeted with worried expressions on their faces. Every once in a while the old woman would engage them in conversation about her cat, apparently sensing that they could use the distraction, for which Sunset was grateful.

The phone rang twice while they waited, startling the boys every time, and kept on ringing at the abandoned reception desk until it went to the machine.

It was during one of the quiet stretches that Sunset decided to speak up. “Whatever happens, you three,” she said, trying not to let her own thoughts that every additional minute that went by was a bad sign show through, “I want you to know that I’m proud of you. Skipping classes, playing pranks in school, that stuff’s ultimately not so important. But when you saw a living being in distress, you did everything in your power to help. Be proud of that.”

It was that exact moment when the double doors opened and a tired looking Fluttershy stepped out. The boys stood up as one person and so did Sunset after a moment. Noticing, Fluttershy held up a finger, asking them to wait, and disposed of a pair of bloody gloves and a surgical mask in a nearby hazmat bin. She ran a hand through her long hair and stepped over to the old woman with a tired smile. “Thank you for your patience, Goldie Delicious. You can take Mr. Boots to Examination Room 2. The doctor will be with you in a minute.”

The old woman nodded and hefted the cage with her cat, giving the boys another reassuring nod before heading towards the back as Fluttershy put her hands into the pockets of her lab coat and made her way over to Sunset’s group with an unreadable expression.

“What’s the word, Fluttershy?” Sunset asked, worried that her students might explode in a puff of anxiety if they had to wait any longer.

“It went well,” she said with a nod, and Sunset could hear three held breaths being exhaled next to her. “We drained the blood from the lungs, set the broken leg and stitched up all the cuts. He’s resting now.”

“So he’ll be okay?” Sprout asked.

“He’s not out of the woods yet,” she replied, hedging a bit. When she saw the worry return to the young faces, however, she quickly added: “But the doctor is liking his chances. There wasn’t any damage to other major organs as far as we could tell. The biggest danger was always losing him on the operating table. We’re gonna need to keep him here for at least a week, make sure he gets his antibiotics and manage any risk of infection. But he’s a young dog, and that works in our favor. Barring any unforeseen complications, he should heal quickly.”

“Can we see him?” Hitch wanted to know.

“Sure.” Fluttershy led the group towards the back and indicated a window into a room. Inside, the pale green puppy was resting quietly in a pet-sized bed, with a cast around his front paw, several bandages across his small body and a protective pet cone attached to his neck.

The three boys literally pressed their noses to the glass. “Look how small he is,” Rufus whispered, “I didn’t realize in all the commotion.”

“Heh,” Sprout said, “look at his nose twitch. You think he’s dreaming?”

Standing back a little next to Fluttershy, Sunset suppressed a chortle. “I didn’t know teenage boys were physically capable of cooing.”

Fluttershy gave her a look. “You kidding? I see about about one or two grown men cry every week in this place. Come on, let’s give them a moment.” With that, she led Sunset towards the reception desk, sat down and started typing some things into the computer in front of her. It wasn’t long until the printer behind her sprang to life. “I’m gonna give you some registration forms. You can fill them out at home and drop them off later. We’re gonna make sure he gets all his shots once he’s recovered a bit.”

Sunset leaned on the counter and sighed. “Yay, paperwork. My favorite,” she said sardonically. “I guess I need to give Sparky a call and get some tips on how to take care of a dog now.”

Fluttershy smiled to herself. “That was really great what you did back there. I don’t think your students even grasped all the implications when you said you were the owner.”

“Yeah, well,” Sunset mused. “Let ‘em believe the universe rewards every good deed for a little while longer. They’ll have to grow up soon enough.”

Several more printouts joined the pile as Fluttershy worked. When she held up the last one, she hesitated for a moment. “It was really great what you did back there,” she repeated. “Let me cover half of this medical bill.”

“Nonsense,” Sunset replied and snatched the paper from her friend. “I made my bed, I’m gonna sleep in it.” Her eyes wandered down to the bottom line and widened as she took in the number written there. “Hurk! Question,” she squeaked, “does your clinic offer payment plans?”

Fluttershy responded by gently yet firmly taking the page back. “I’ll cover half. I’m still getting those residuals from that modeling job I did in college. Might as well put it to good use.”

Sunset waged a brief internal battle in which her pride was overrun, rounded up and summarily shot by her student debt. “Please and thank you,” she finally said, “I’ll get you the rest by the end of the month.”

Glancing at the clock, Fluttershy said: “My, it’s gotten rather late. I can finish up the rest here by myself. Do you need to get your students home?”

It took a moment for that question to really hit Sunset’s mind full force. But then she turned rapidly as white as Fluttershy’s lab coat and her eyes widened even more than when she had seen the medical bill. “Oh, fuck me running!” She turned towards the back of the clinic and barked while clapping her hands: “Boys! To the car, on the double! Let’s move it!”

“Ms. Sunset, is everything alright?” Hitch asked as he and the others followed Sunset’s quick steps after getting out of the car and making their way around to the front entrance of CHS. The setting autumn sun had already begun casting the campus in long shadows.

“Huh? Sure, why wouldn’t it be?” she asked in a forcefully chipper voice.

Sprout quirked an eyebrow. “Uh, you probably shaved a full minute off your time on the return trip.”

“Indeed,” Rufus said, “I didn’t know a Fiesta could go that fast.”

“Well, it’s getting late,” she replied, “you boys should head straight to the classroom and get your … shit.” Sunset stopped abruptly as she rounded the corner and spotted Celestia standing by the front doors with her arms crossed in front of her chest and a dark look on her face. Sunset closed her eyes for a moment and muttered under her breath: “Being a teacher was nice while it lasted. Wonder if the sushi place at the mall is hiring.”

Once she’d collected herself, she resolutely marched forward, dragging forward one heavy foot at a time and wondering if this was how Marie Antoinette had felt on her way to the guillotine.

“Ms. Shimmer,” Celestia said coldly while drumming her fingers on her upper arm.

“Principal, what a surprise running into you here.”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” she replied with a blank stare. “I was just doing my final rounds before locking up for the day. Imagine my surprise when I walked by your classroom and finding it empty except for three backpacks and with three windows standing wide open.”

There was a long silence as Sunset deliberated on whether to go down the list of all the school regulations she’d broken one by one or simply offer her resignation outright. Before she could decide, she suddenly felt Hitch push past her and deliberately put himself between his teacher and principal with a determined look on his face. “Principal Celestia, I’d like to lodge a formal complaint about Ms. Sunset.”

“Hitch, what the fuck are you doing?” Sprout hissed.

But Hitch went on undeterred. “I believe having us pick up litter all over the school grounds during detention constitutes a cruel and unusual punishment for our infractions.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow at that.

“What the? Litter?” Sprout asked in confusion and took an elbow to the ribs from Hitch for his trouble.

“Quite so,” Rufus, much quicker to catch on, chimed in. “Why, we never even saw a single soul as we went around the perimeter to clean up. It’s like she found the most remote corners that were still on school property to have us pick up trash, and yet she watched us like a hawk. Never left her sight.”

Sprout still looked somewhat confused, but Rufus and Hitch stared daggers at him for a good long while. “Ohhh,” he finally said when the light went on, “yeah, what they said.”

Sunset smiled sheepishly.

Celestia gave each of the students a suspicious look in turn, then stared at Sunset as she delivered her verdict. “Form and duration of detention is up to the discretion of the supervising teacher,” she quoted from the school regulations verbatim. “Your complaint is noted and dismissed, Mr. Trailblazer. Ms. Shimmer.”

“Yes, Principal Celestia!” Sunset said, her voice about an octave higher than usual.

“Do be so good as to lock up once you’ve let your students out. You’ll be doing so for the remainder of the month as well.”

“Yes, Principal. Understood.”

Celestia nodded, sighed as if to say something else, then seemed to think better of it and simply walked off.

There was about thirty seconds of silence. “Is she gone?” Sunset asked, afraid to turn around and check for herself.

“Yep,” Hitch confirmed after a moment.

Sunset doubled over and let out an explosive breath as she held on to her shaking knees with her hands. “You know, as your teacher, I can’t condone you lying to the principal,” she said half-heartedly.

When she looked up, she found three grinning faces staring at her.

Standing up, she double-checked that Celestia was truly gone and added: “Thank you. Your detention is officially served. Now wipe those grins off your faces, get your stuff and get outta here. I’ve got about fifty doors to lock up.”

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-Daedalus Aegle

Celestia hadn’t said anything else in regard to Sunset’s little excursion with the detention students. But she was under no illusion that the principal had bought that little excuse the boys had come up with to save her ass, which reminded her of a conversation she’d had with Cranky on her first day and how transparent her own ‘clever’ schemes at that age must have seemed to the faculty.

Be that as it may, Celestia had apparently decided that she didn’t want to know anything else as long as nobody ruffled the feathers of any parents or guardians about it. That didn’t mean she had let Sunset get off scot-free, however. A simple look at the daily roster was enough to make that clear, meaning Sunset was saddled with the most unpopular faculty jobs, locking up at night and supervising the main entrance early in the morning. Sunset was in the doghouse, and Celestia made sure she knew it.

The principal had miscalculated on one thing, however. While staying late was an annoyance and Sunset wasn’t usually a morning person, she quickly found that she actually enjoyed standing by the main entrance and watching the students go about their morning, a point in the day where youthful spirit shone the brightest and the students would interact more normally with their teachers, knowing that there was no imminent danger of a pop quiz for at least another fifteen minutes.

“Morning, Sunset!” Three young women passed her by with a smile and a wave.

“Good morning, you three,” Sunset greeted the seniors Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo.

Another two seniors from her AP History class approached, one of them pulling a slender book from her backpack and handing it to her. “Good morning, Ms. Sunset. I’m done with this. Thanks for lending it to me.”

Sunset nodded and took back the obscure local history print about Camp Everfree. “Did it help?”

“You bet,” Diamond Tiara confirmed with a sly grin. “You may want to hold off on reading my paper till last when it’s done. I guarantee you nobody else will have written a better mid-term about the local history of Canterlot, especially not Apple Bloom.”

Sunset looked over the young woman’s shoulder at her friend. Silver Spoon grimaced and tilted her hand back and forth to indicate a little uncertainty at the accuracy of that statement.

“Well, I look forward to reading it,” Sunset finally replied. “See you in class.”

She continued to return greetings from students and to look the part of responsible adult on watch for any mischief, none of which was materializing as was customary for most mornings. The herd thinned as students wrapped up their morning chats with friends from different classes and went inside.

It was then that Sunset walked up to a shifty-looking youth in a dark trenchcoat who had been loitering near the corner of the building. He watched her approach closely, one eye hidden under black hair and the other staring through thick, black eyeliner.

When she was only a step away, he held out a fist. “Hey, Miss S,” he greeted in a transparently faked husky voice that was somewhere between a chain-smoking grandmother and Christian Bale’s Batman.

She bumped his fist from the top, from below and then straight on with a nod. “Crow.”

“It’s Scar now, Miss S,” he corrected her. “Crow was so last week. Scar is my new soul name, captures my daily struggle with the Dark Arts.”

“Sure,” Sunset acknowledged while thinking to herself: The week before that it was ‘Darkling.’ Doesn’t change the fact that it’s Trey on the attendance sheet. She gave him a look. “You got something for me, Scar?”

He drew up his shoulders, casting a suspicious glance to the left and right before reaching into his trenchcoat and staring at his teacher intently for a moment. “Looking for something to take the edge off this morning, Miss S? Sure, I can hook you up. Try this,” he said and pulled a cookie in a paper wrapper from his pocket, offering it to her.

She took the cookie while holding his gaze, sniffing lightly. “Do I smell cinnamon?”

His visible eye sparkled, and it clearly became a little more difficult for him to keep up the husky, conspiratorial whisper through the excitement. “Been trying out some new recipes, something seasonal. Pumpkin spice, crushed cranberry candy and a cinnamon glaze. I call it the Triple Holiday.”

Sunset held eye contact while taking a bite and chewing slowly. “Delicious,” she whispered, “you think this combination might do well for something more substantial? Like a … cupcake?”

He looked at her in both shock and excitement and shuddered. “The Dark Arts are calling to me. I must away to the Dark Lair at once,” he said with a glint in his eye and began walking off a little awkwardly in an attempt to make his trenchcoat flutter dramatically behind him.

“Don’t be late to class,” Sunset called after him, “and don’t forget to clean up in the Home Economics Room when you’re done using it.”

“Got a free period this morning, Miss S,” he said without turning around, his phony growl dropping halfway in the excitement, “I bet I can make enough to share with the whole class. See you for English this afternoon.”

Sunset chuckled, took another bite of her cookie and walked back towards the front entrance where Sunny Starscout spotted her and immediately came running up. “Ms. Sunset! Have you heard about nuclear fusion?”

“Nuclear fusion?” Sunset asked, baffled.

Sunny nodded, pulled a flier from her bag and handed it to her teacher. “It’s Green Week. Trying to raise awareness on clean energy. The person who figures out fusion might be going to our school right now,” she said enthusiastically.

Sunset nodded while continuing to munch on her cookie. Couple of years ago, I would have agreed with that, and I still do. Twilight might be a little miffed if a highschooler beats her to the punch, though.

At that moment, Izzy Moonbow came running over while dragging a hand cart of fliers behind her, one of which she handed to Sunset. “Ms. Sunset! Did you know it’s Green Week? Oh, hi, Sunny.”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” Sunset answered. “What’s your idea to save the planet, then?”

“Well,” Izzy replied slyly, “I’ve been crunching the numbers, and if we plant 150 trees on school grounds, CHS will have cut its carbon footprint in half.”

Pretty sure that would mean CHS ceases to be a school and becomes a wood, assuming there’s even space for that many trees, Sunset thought to herself.

“Ms. Sunset! Would you have a look at this?” She turned to see Hitch running up with a flier in hand, seeing the scene before him and going: “Oh.”

“Hitch, you doing something for Green Week, too?” Sunny asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, I’m running a petition to ask Principal Celestia to have solar panels installed on the roof.”

That’ll go over well with the Princess of Public School Budgets, Sunset thought wryly. She took the third flier and looked all three over. “So, let me get this straight. The three of you each came up with the idea to participate in Green Week independently of each other and printed out a bunch of fliers on non-recycled paper.”

They all looked at each other a little sheepishly.

“Tell you what,” Sunset said, finishing her cookie and placing the paper wrapper atop the three fliers, “I love seeing you take an interest in the future. But how about you three team up together and set your sights on something a little more achievable? You can start with this.” She handed the fliers plus wrapper back. “Encourage your peers to clean out their lockers and start a waste paper collection. Old notes and magazines, that sort of thing. I’ll chip in, too. I drive by the recycling center on my way home. You help get what you collected over the week to my car on Friday, and I’ll drop it off for you.”

Sunny beamed. “That’s an awesome idea, Ms. Sunset.”

Izzy nodded. “And we can double recycle by taping these fliers together and make a banner for the collection point! Let’s set up by the cafeteria! You in, Hitch?”

“Uh, sure,” the boy said, “why don’t you go ahead? I’ll catch up in a moment.”

The two girls nodded and made their way inside, chatting animatedly about their plans for their recycling point.

The front yard was all but empty at this point, and Hitch looked at his teacher a little hesitantly. “I was gonna ask …”

Sunset smiled and nodded. “Fluttershy tells me the pup’s doing fine, Hitch. He’s never gonna be a marathon runner, but otherwise he’s on the road to making a full recovery, thanks to you and the others.”

Hitch finally returned the smile and nodded. “That’s great. I’m not allowed any pets at my place, but I usually work as a dog walker on weekends. You should bring him by sometime.”

“I’ll make sure I do, Hitch,” Sunset said as the final bell rung, “go on now. You don’t want to be late to class.”

As Hitch made his way inside, Sunset decided to remain for a bit since she didn’t have a class at this hour. Standing in front of the cubist horse statue, she watched her breath condense in the morning air and decided that, no, she still didn’t like it.

A gust of cold wind picked up, and a chill ran down Sunset’s spine as the cool air stung her eyes and made her blink. In that moment, she thought she saw a shadow swoop by on the edge of her vision. Startled, she moved around the statue and looked around, only to find nothing.

“… Huh, that was weird.” She shook her head. “I guess Sunny turned me a bit paranoid, jumping at shadows.”

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Sunset wound her way around the classroom, happy to see her students hard at work. She’d almost made it back to the teacher’s desk when something caught her attention from the corner of her eye. Somehow she managed to suppress the sigh but not the facepalm.

Subsequently, the entire class looked when her hand smacked her forehead as she halted next to Sprout’s desk. Broken out of his artist’s focus, he slowly turned to look at his teacher with a guilty expression, folded his latest masterpiece in half and handed it over.

Snatching it up, Sunset unfolded the paper far enough that she, and only she, could see it. It wasn’t a drawing of her this time. Rather, it portrayed another subject that seemed to have recently caught his attention. The sketch was of Fluttershy, wearing an open lab coat and a smile … and nothing else.

“Well, at least the shading has improved,” Sunset murmured.

Before some hope for leniency at that comment could make itself onto Sprout’s face, Sunset had already put a detention slip in front of him. “Do you … think I could at least have that back after class, Ms. Sunset?” he asked hesitantly. “It’s actually a commission.”

“Commission?” Sunset asked with a raised eyebrow and no small amount of suppressed amusement. “For who?”

“Uhm, I invoke artist-client confidentiality,” he said.

“Do you now?” Sunset was trying extremely hard at this point not to let her amusement show through. “You do realize that I have a 50-50 shot of getting this right, don’t you?” She cast a quick glance at two more of her students who were trying very hard to bury their noses in their books and look inconspicuous at this point. “You can ask your clients,” she said, stressing the plural S, “for an extension as you start over outside of class. Content creators do it all the time.” As if I’m not gonna keep this. I can’t wait to see Fluttershy’s face when I show it to her. She’s gonna blush so hard that steam’s gonna start coming out of her ears.

“Do you want me to add this to our recycling corner, Ms. Sunset?” Sunny asked in cheerful ignorance, turning and holding out her hand.

Sunset paused long enough for Sprout and his cohorts to actually get the impression that she might consider handing the drawing off to one of their female classmates, then said: “Thank you, Sunny. I can take this one out myself.” Returning to the front of the class, Sunset tapped the blackboard. “Alright, our time is nearly up. Anyone for bonus points this week?”

The assignment on the board read: “Bruttosozialprodukt. Translate into English and explain the concept in a German sentence.”

“Anyone other than Zipp?” Sunset asked when a single arm was raised. She waited a couple moments in vain, then added: “Go ahead.”

Zipp stood up, cleared her throat and read slowly from her notepad. “Das Bruttosozialprodukt ist die Gesamtheit aller produzierten Guh… Güter und Dienstleistungen in ein Jahr.” She looked up and added: “The translation is gross domestic product.”

“In einem Jahr,” Sunset corrected gently, pronouncing the words carefully, “but yes, that is a correct definition. Well done, Zipp.”

Zipp smirked triumphantly and sat back down while the rest of the class simply looked on in defeat, having long given up on the game of one-upmanship the two of them were playing every week.

Sunset marked down the correct answer. She’d almost immediately decided that for Zipp she’d have to implement another rule, only granting an additional A for another five correct answers and then ten for a third one. The bar stood at one for the other students, but Zipp was well on her way to making a run at a clean sweep.

This development was somewhat troubling. In order to constantly challenge Zipp, she ran the risk of alienating her other students. And she hadn’t forgotten the other reasons some of her students had signed up for this class in the first place. She had a solution. She’d even laid the groundwork with her friends. But Sunset had been hesitant to pull the trigger, since it would mean going directly against Celestia. That was a scary proposition, especially right now. Sunset looked at Pipp and Rufus in the back row, the former swiping at her phone with a bored expression and the latter busying himself with knotting some colored handkerchiefs together. That’s when she made her choice.

With ten minutes left in today’s class, Sunset had made up her mind. She pulled a small booklet out of her bag and held it up. “I’ve got another extra credits project for all of you, if you’re interested.” Some heads immediately perked up at the words extra credits. “This is a stage adaptation of Der Schimmelreiter. It’s come to my attention that the auditorium has no big events scheduled after the Fall Formal. We start rehearsing now, we could put on a play in spring. What do you say?”

After springing the idea out of the blue, Sunset allowed some whispered conversations to take place as students turned this way and that, but kept her eyes on one particular corner of the classroom where Pipp and Rufus had gone into immediate conference after the initial shock. Pipp raised her hand.

“Yes, Pipp.”

“Uhm, we wouldn’t have to perform in German, would we?”

Sunset shook her head. “No, this would be mostly in English. If we did the production in German, the possible audience would be limited to the performers. By my reckoning, that would put exactly zero butts in seats. So, what do you say, drama club? Do I have a leading man and lady or not?”

Another look passed between the two students and Pipp nodded. Taking his cue from her, Rufus added expansively: “Indubitably, Ms. Sunset.”

“Excellent,” Sunset said, “but two players doth not a play make. Who else is in?”

Zipp had been regarding her sister throughout the entire exchange. If anyone knew of the woes of the drama club, odds were that she did. “Count me in,” she said to Sunset, “just for a minor background role.”

Sunset nodded and looked over to Sunny and Izzy. “What about you two? Ready to unleash your inner thespians?”

They both considered it for a moment and then affirmed, deciding to put their trust in Sunset.

Okay, Sunset thought to herself, looking around the room, that went about as well as it could have. Now for the holdouts. “How about you, Posey?”

Posey raised an eyebrow while smoothing a wrinkle in her blouse. “I don’t know, Ms. Shimmer. A play? Seems like a waste of time that could be spent studying instead.”

“Extracurriculars look good on a college application,” she pointed out shrewdly.

“… I’m in.”

“Attagirl.” Sunset grinned and turned her head. “What about over here? You’ve been awfully quiet, Windownia. How about you put your artistic skills to some use in becoming our set designer, Sprout?”

Sprout’s face was more easily readable than most. While the idea of performing had registered with an immediate dismissal, now the gears were turning. “You mean, actually creating something that everyone at school is gonna see? Uh, I dunno, Ms. Sunset.”

He was teetering, and he’d accidentally handed Sunset the perfect tool to nudge him the rest of the way just a few minutes ago. “I’ll trade ya for that detention slip.”

“Deal,” he said, holding up the piece of paper.

She took it, ripped it in half and stood in front of Hitch. “Class rep?”

He looked genuinely apologetic as he drew up his shoulders a little defensively. “I’m sorry, Ms. Sunset. I’m not sure I can make this work. I assume rehearsals would be after school?”

“Mostly,” Sunset admitted. She knew this would be a hard sell, but she’d come up with a compromise. “I was thinking we could use some PR. Perhaps someone who talks to a lot of people in town on a daily basis and can maybe put up some posters around the park?”

Hitch met her eyes, sat up straight and nodded. “That I can do.”

That left one. She’d been keeping an eye on her newest student, and there had been a mounting terror of peer pressure on her face. “How about it, Misty?”

Misty Brightdawn looked around the classroom, looking very uncomfortable in spite of the encouraging smiles she was getting from most of the other students. “I … uhm … er,” her voice cracked a little. “I’m not … sure I could stand on stage.”

Sunset looked around the rest of the class and said: “I think we’ve got enough players. But I could use a co-director.”

Misty remained silent.

Sunset decided to ease off the pressure. “Think about it,” she said softly, then addressed the class as a whole again. “Looks like we’ve got enough of a quorum. Anyone who is interested, meet me next Tuesday at 2.45 p.m. in the auditorium for our first rehearsal. We’ll decide on who plays what character then.”

“That’s an oddly specific time,” Hitch pointed out.

“Is it?” Sunset asked innocently just as the bell rung. “Class dismissed.”

As the students packed up and filed out, some already making plans to meet up at Sugarcube Corner and discuss this new development in little groups, Misty stayed behind. When the room was empty except for her and her teacher, she stood up and walked up to Sunset, her face half hidden behind her blue locks. “I’m really sorry, Ms. Sunset.”

Sunset shook her head. “Don’t be. I’m the one who’s sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot like that. I’m not gonna force you to take part if you don’t want to.”

Misty fidgeted for a moment before asking: “Why did you ask me to be co-director?”

Sunset smiled knowingly and replied: “Show me the first page in your notebook.”

The young girl was startled for a moment, but complied.

Sunset looked it over. She’d noticed Misty turning the page over and refer back to it often in class, and she saw exactly what she’d expected to find. It was a list of her classmates’ names, physical descriptions and first impressions which had been steadily added to over the last few weeks. “I know it’s hard to transfer to a new school in the middle of a school year. I think a lot of your classmates would like to be your friends if you give them a chance. I figured co-director would give you the opportunity to get to know them better.”

“… I’ll think about it,” Misty promised after Sunset had handed back the notebook.

Sunset watched her student leave and rested against the edge of her desk, considering her next steps, thoughts going back and forth between how she would deal with Celestia and how to make sure everyone was involved and having fun. Something lightly thumped against her chest, but she ignored it. Misty was another matter. Sunset had built a good rapport with most of her students, but Misty remained withdrawn, and Sunset didn’t want to push too hard too fast.

Again it felt as if something thumped against her chest, and Sunset frowned. Curious, she pulled the geode crystal out from under her shirt and held it in her hand. It felt slightly warm to the touch, but Sunset was unsure whether she was just feeling her own body heat. She waited quietly, and then something pushed in at the edge of her vision as the pendant seemingly jumped in her palm.

Sunset turned towards the window and her eyes went wide. There was a figure, a shadowy black figure with a humanoid shape, all its facial features obscured in darkness except for an inhumanely wide, toothy grin, and it was staring directly at her.

She blinked and the figure was gone. Sunset shot up like she’d been struck by lightning and ripped the window open, leaning halfway out and looking back and forth. Nothing. No sign of the creature that she’d just seen clear as day.

She knew exactly what the thumping in her chest right now was as her heart raced a mile a minute, threatening to leap out of her throat. She felt her hands going as cold as ice, fingers tightly gripping the windowsill until her knuckles went white.

Her knees almost gave out under her as she took a few steps back from the window, and she nearly screamed when she saw her own reflection in the glass of the window, deathly pale, wide-eyed and afraid. Sunset simply stood there, her whole body shaking, and whispered two words: “Shadow Puppet.”

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Dear Sunset Shimmer,

I apologize for not writing back sooner. Given the urgency and alarmed nature of your last letter, I thought it best to cross all the Ts and dot all the Is on my end before responding. So I’ll get straight to the point.

I’ve checked on the Horn of Sombra personally, and it remains safely locked away beneath Canterlot in the secret portion of the Star Swirl the Bearded wing of the Royal Library. I have subjected both the protection wards and the artifact itself to every scanning spell I know. Neither show any signs of tampering, recent or otherwise, and the horn remains in a depowered state.

I then proceeded to my old workshop where I keep the disassembled pieces of my Portal Amplification Device. While I ran the same battery of magical tests to be safe, it was clear by the layer of dust that nopony had disturbed the pieces, not that they would do anypony any good without this very journal, which has never left my possession over the years.

Finally, I instructed Starlight Glimmer to inspect the Portal Mirror itself at the Castle of Friendship. In addition to the scanning spells, (again no sign of foul play,) she conducted one more test on her own initiative. By measuring the thaum decay around the mirror, she was able to calculate the last time the portal was active: 2 years, 1 moon and 13 days ago. (Plus or minus a couple days, given the error margin of the formulae she used.) I’ve checked her math twice, and that date puts it right around the time we managed to stabilize the portal for the last time with the remaining magic of your geodes to bring Mage Meadowbrook through to have a look at your friend Pinkie. Just as we would expect.

To sum up: We’ve all but ruled out the possibility that the entity you described and have dubbed a ‘Shadow Puppet’ could have crossed over from this side to your world via the usual means. The natural alignment of the moons that could open the portal isn’t due for another couple moons either, I believe sometime around spring next year according to your calendar.

… I hesitate to bring this up, but are you absolutely sure that you saw what you think you saw? Judging by your most recent letters, it seems clear to me it might be that perhaps it’s Would you agree that your return to CHS might have stirred up some painful memories? Given that mental state, maybe you just saw would it not be possible that you saw a shadow, and your mind started playing tricks on you?

The inherent irony of me accusing somepony else of twilighting is not lost on me. But I also know the toll the aftermath of the Maretime Bay incident took on you. So here’s my official advice as the Princess of Friendship: Talk to your friends. They’ve lifted you out of the darkness before, and they can help keep you from sliding back into it if you give them the chance. Of course, I’m here for you as well if you need me, though I feel as powerless as I did two years ago to help.

Know that you are in my thoughts and that I will always be here to listen to your worries, day or night. But please also talk to your friends, or at least my counterpart. She knows you better than anyone.

Your friend,
Princess Twilight Sparkle

P.S.: And promise me you’ll look after your health. Remember to eat!

Sunset Shimmer sat atop her bed, wrapped into a blanket burrito and just having finished reading the letter from the journal out loud. Before her on the bed laid said journal and her phone, the dim glow from the screen being the only illumination in the room. “So, that’s what she had to say,” Sunset said. There was a pause, and she added: “Sparky? You still there?”

A long yawn could be heard over the speaker setting of the phone before Twilight’s voice replied: “Yeah, I heard all of it. So did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Eat something today, Sunset?”

“I think I had a candy bar sometime today. … Maybe that was yesterday.”

Twilight’s answer was accompanied by a sigh. “Oh, Sunset.”

“You don’t have to say it, Sparky,” Sunset said while rubbing her stinging eyes. “Not enough that I made her worry, then I went ahead and called you up in the middle of the night as soon as her reply came in. I feel like such an ass.” She glanced at the clock on her wall reading shortly after 3 a.m.

“Don’t,” Twilight said, followed by a slurp of what Sunset presumed to be freshly brewed coffee. “I’m glad you decided to call. If you’d waited til morning, you might have decided to deal with this by yourself after all. Again. Besides, I’m a PhD student. What the hell even is sleep? Are you gonna take her advice and tell the others?”

“No, I don’t think so. Not without concrete proof. I’m not sure I could stand seeing that pity in their eyes again. That might actually send me spiraling.” There was a long silence that followed. “You agree with her, don’t you? That I’m making this up?”

“That’s not what she said, Sunset, and you know it. The sovereign ruler of an entire nation took you seriously enough to drop everything and launch a full-scale investigation into your claim within a day and a half. The least you can do is consider the alternative. She’s too polite to say it, but I’m not.”

“Sparky, don’t …”

“This could be your PTSD talking, and you need to acknowledge that possibility. I’ve seen you go down that road, and I’m not about to let it happen again. I need to hear you say it.”

“Sparky, please don’t make me …” Sunset was all but pleading with her old friend.

“Say it, Sunset!” Twilight insisted in an unusually harsh tone.

Sunset drew in her breath while the tears welled up in her eyes. “Pinkie Pie’s death was not my fault.”

“The whole thing, please,” Twilight said, obviously straining to keep that same firm voice. “We practiced this.”

“We don’t know what caused her mysterious illness, so there is no proof that either the Maretime Bay incident or Equestrian magic are to blame,” she went on between short breaths. “And even if that were the case, there is nothing I could have done to prevent it.” Except never having brought Equestrian magic to this world in the first place, she added silently. So you can make me say it all you want, but I’m not sure I’ll ever fully believe it.

“Are you alright, Sunset?” Twilight asked, her voice immediately softening again and shifting back to concern and sympathy for her friend after that exercise.

“… Please stop chewing the corner of the magic journal. That can’t be good for you.”

“Er, what?” She shifted again, this time to confusion and, Sunset thought, perhaps a little bit of fear that her friend had just fully cracked.

“Sorry, Sparky,” Sunset said with a sniff, “talking to the dog.” She lifted the small creature up from where he was assaulting the binding and into her lap. “Come on, puppy. What’s wrong? We walked around the block three times while I was waiting for Princess Twilight’s reply,” she said while the little ball of nervous energy kept wriggling and whining in her lap.

Another voice preempted by a yawn came over the phone. “Reach behind his ears and give him a couple scritches. Those pet cones are torture.”

Sunset did so, carefully reaching into the pet cone and behind his ears. The effect was immediate as the puppy’s whines turned into panting, and he relaxed, sprawling across her lap. “Thanks for the tip, Spike.”

Twilight came back on. “Are you okay now?”

Sunset took a deep breath and wiped her face with her pajama sleeve. “Yeah. Thanks for the tough love, Sparky. You were right. Other Twilight is too polite to give me the slap in the face I needed, but she knew you could do it.”

“Well, that Twilight never slept with you, so.”

A soft chuckle escaped Sunset’s throat in spite of herself. “That’s true. I don’t know how I could have survived this without your help back then. And here you are, still dealing with my shit. I’m sorry, Sparky.”

“Don’t be. We all took Pinkie’s death hard, but nobody was hurting quite the same way you were. … I think we all feared at one point or another that we might lose you, too.”

Sunset was taken aback, feeling like Twilight had just let something slip that she’d carefully kept a lid on for all this time. “Wow, that’s dark,” she said in a whisper. “I know I was in a dark place, but I never considered how it looked from the outside. I’m so sorry I had you all so worried. I promise, I won’t let it get that far this time.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Twilight said. “Don’t be afraid to ask for help. I may not be your girlfriend anymore, but I am still your friend. If you need help, the others and I are here for you.”

“I know. Thanks, Sparky.” The dog in Sunset’s lap gave a short bark and looked at her with his big puppy eyes. Somehow that also helped soothe her aching heart.

“Sounds like your new friend agrees with me,” Twilight added after that. “Try to get at least a little sleep tonight, will you? And eat something in the morning, even if you don’t feel like it.”

“I’ll try,” Sunset promised before ending the call with: “Goodnight, Sparky.” She sat there in the darkness for a moment, until a retching sound broke the silence and something warm spread across her lap. Sunset nodded. “Yep, I’ll try to get some sleep. But first, I gotta clean up after the puppy that just threw up in my lap.”

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Sunset stood in the auditorium, staring at the doors. Every so often, she would move her head and watch the shadow being cast by the flickering hallway light outside move with her field of vision. Maybe I was just on edge and imagining things.

“Ms. Sunset?”

I mean, the thing with the dog was stressful. Pinkie’s been on my mind a lot lately, I’ve been at odds with Celestia, all the while I was still getting used to this new job.

“Ms. Sunset!”

Sunset slightly jumped at the voice behind her and turned around to see one of her students standing there with a worried expression. “Misty. Sorry, I was lost in thought for a moment.”

“Everything alright?” Misty asked. “You’ve been staring at the door a lot, considering this is our first rehearsal.”

Sunset shook her head and forced a smile. “It’s nothing. Never mind. What can I do for you?”

Misty handed her teacher a piece of paper. “I think we’ve settled on the casting.”

She gave it a read and tilted her head. “Huh.”

“Something wrong?”

“No, it’s just … not quite what I was expecting. Pipp as Elke is obvious, but how come Rufus isn’t playing Hauke?”

Misty shrugged. “He said he’d much rather play the villain, and everyone agreed that the actual drama club members should get to play the roles they wanted. I had the others read the dance hall scene with Pipp, and Sunny turned out to have the best chemistry with her, so she’s playing the male lead. Is that a problem?”

Sunset shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. We were always gonna have to make some allowances in terms of the girls playing some of the parts written for men. As long as everyone is happy with their assignments, that’s the most important thing.”

“Well, Posey wanted to play the villain at first, and she got a little huffy when we suggested the crazy cat lady instead. But Izzy was happy to take that part, so Posey and Zipp are playing Hauke and Elke’s fathers respectively, or I guess their mothers as the case may be.”

“And the schoolmaster?”

“I’m gonna have to take that one myself,” Misty answered. “Hitch and Sprout agreed to play some of the background villagers, but I don’t think they’ll have time to learn the opening and closing monologues with their other duties. Is that alright?”

Sunset began to smile and patted Misty’s shoulder. “Sure, if you think you can handle it, co-director. I’m glad you decided to get involved.”

Misty returned the smile a little sheepishly. “Should we start by running some scenes then?”

“Actually, I had something different in mind for our first rehearsal. I’m just waiting on someone to show up.”

As if on cue, the door on the opposite side of the auditorium opened and a smartly dressed woman with luxurious purple hair stepped inside, pulling a clothes rail behind her. “Yoo-hoo! Sunset, darling!”

“Always one for a dramatic entrance,” Sunset grinned and made her way over as the students turned to look at the newcomer. “Hello, Rarity. Glad you could make it.”

“Of course, darling,” Rarity replied, giving Sunset a quick kiss on either cheek by way of greeting. “Sorry about the delay. Traffic was murder. Is this all of them?”

Sunset swept her arm in the direction of her class. “All yours, Rare. They’re in your capable hands.”

Rarity clapped her hands and beckoned the students to gather around. “Alright, hello, my darlings. You may call me Ms. Rarity or simply Rarity if you prefer. Ms. Sunset has asked me to give you all a helping hand in the costume department. Now these,” she said, gesturing towards the clothes rail full of period dresses and other assorted clothes, “are on loan from a friend of mine at the community theater. I’ll be taking your measurements and making something custom for each of you before the premiere. But for today, I figured we’d try out some options to get a baseline figured out for your characters. Who’s playing the leads here?”

“That’d be us!” Pipp said immediately, approaching with stars in her eyes while pushing a slightly more apprehensive Sunny forward as well.

“Oh, marvelous. I love your hair. We must talk about colors. I already have some ideas.” Switching to Sunny, she added: “Do we have two leading ladies? I’m afraid I don’t know the script very well.”

“Actually, Sunny’s playing the male lead,” Sunset supplied. “Since they’re married with a child, I don’t think any amount of script finagling is gonna change that.”

“That’s fine, actually,” Sunny pointed out, standing there in her customary jeans and sweater combo. “I’m not really used to wearing dresses.”

“Hm.” Rarity pondered that a bit, circling around Sunny with a thoughtful expression. “Yes, you have a good jawline to be playing a male character. I can work with this. Don’t you worry, darling. You won’t look any less spectacular. I’m thinking riding corset.”

“C-corset?” Sunny asked.

“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” Rarity insisted and began going through the costumes she had brought.

Sunset decided to leave Rarity to it at that point and made her way over to the lone student who hadn’t gathered around the fashionista. “How we doing over here, Arts and Props Department?”

Sprout stood thoughtfully in front of a large piece of plywood leaning against the wall. So far, all he had accomplished was to give it a white foundation, from which point on he’d simply stood there staring at it. “This … is a lot more daunting than I first thought, Ms. Sunset.”

“Why’s that?”

He shook his head. “It’s all this space. I have no idea what I’m doing here, and I have no idea how to use those.” He gestured to the spray cans standing at the base of the plywood.

“Listen,” Sunset said, picking up one of the cans and shaking it to get it going. “I know it’s scary to try a new medium and new tools, but it’s really not that different. You’re used to working with a pencil, right? So all of your muscle memory is in your fingertips and your wrist.”

He nodded, uncertain of where she was going with this.

“If you do it like that, it’ll take you forever to work with this space.” She pressed the spray cap and made a short red line by moving her wrist. “Basically, you scale everything up. How hard you depress the cap is the same as how much force you put into the tip of your pencil. And instead of just using your fingertips and wrist, you use your arm and your whole body.” Making an arc with her arm and pressing down on the can harder, she painted a big arc.

Sprout furrowed his brows and nodded, displaying an expression that he so rarely exhibited during history class, trying to learn something new.

Sunset picked up another can of yellow spray paint and got that going, too. “Don’t be afraid to go bold,” she instructed and began painting her cutie mark while dual-wielding the spray cans. Her hips gyrated to make her whole body trace the arcs she was creating on the plywood. This is fun, Sunset thought as she lost herself in the process for a few moments, I haven’t done this in way too long. Getting up from the squatting position she used to apply the final touches, she took a step back and looked at the finished work with some pride. “See? Just like that.”

When Sprout didn’t answer, she looked over and found him seemingly lost in thought with an intense stare on his face, squarely focused on her hips.

Frowning, Sunset snapped her fingers in front of his eyes a couple of times. “Hey, eyes up here.”

“What?” He met her eyes and began to blush furiously at having been caught staring. “Sorry, that was just … kinda captivating.”

She handed him one of the cans and turned him towards the plywood. “Go on, you try it now.”

Sprout brought the nozzle of the can up to the wall and paused, frowning. “What if I make a mistake?”

“We’re artists. We don’t make mistakes, we have happy accidents,” she replied with a grin.

He gave her a blank stare in return.

“Guess you’re too young to get that reference.” Sunset shrugged. “So what if you do make a mistake?” She picked up a can of white paint and began spraying over her cutie mark drawing until it was completely covered over again.

“Ms. Sunset! That was beautiful,” he cried out in a strangled voice. “Why’d you erase it?”

Sunset grimaced slightly. “It was alright. I’m way out of practice. But the point is, you can always start over. You can’t be afraid of making a mistake, or that fear will hold you back from ever getting started in the first place or learning from them.”

There was a brief pause, until he said: “Okay.” After one more deep breath, he pressed down on the can and began drawing the outline of some hills in the distance, hesitant at first, but more steadily as he went along. After about the halfway point, he took a look, picked up the white spray can in his left hand to erase the early uncertain lines and replace them with something more akin to the later ones.

Sunset smiled to herself and stepped away without Sprout even noticing. It was then that she spotted a woman in a yellow blazer step into the auditorium. Here we go, shock and awe, Sunset. Where the heck is Applejack?

Swinging by Hitch, she asked: “You got the proofs for the fliers?”

“Uh, yeah. Here, Ms. Sunset,” Hitch replied and handed her a piece of paper.

Sunset snatched it up, gave her student a wink and arced around to intercept her target without even breaking her stride.

When Celestia noticed her approach, she narrowed her eyes dangerously.

“Hi, Principal,” Sunset said loudly and cheerfully, “what brings you to this specific place at this specific time?”

Celestia mustered her former student sternly, and Sunset knew full well that she wasn’t fooling her about anything. It was only the presence of the students that gave her an umbrella to execute her covert strike. “I was going to check in on the drama club,” Celestia answered carefully.

Sunset nodded. “Right, this is their time slot to use the space, isn’t it?” She strained her neck to glance at the clipboard Celestia was holding and read the words ‘Notice of Dissolution’ upside down on it. “Well, since they’re not performing anything this year, I co-opted the slot for my class’ production of Der Shimmelreiter.” She put the paper down on Celestia’s clipboard and added: “Certainly would have made things easier if I could have asked the drama club advisor to make it a co-production.”

Staring daggers for a couple more moments, Celestia looked down at the ad. “Corporate Sponsors: Carousel Boutique & Sweet Apple Acres,” she read aloud.

“That’s right. No strain on your budget.” She nodded towards Pipp and Sunny, who had put on a first selection of costumes and were trying out how well they would hold up for the dance scene, with Sunny looking slightly awkward but Pipp easily leading them into a few effortless turns.

A strong voice with a Southern drawl then made itself heard behind Celestia. “Heads up! Comin’ thru. Oh, hiya, Principal. Good timing. Ah was hoping to get a word in with ya today.”

Thank harmony, cavalry’s here, Sunset thought.

Celestia strained to put on a smile as she turned to look at the blonde apple farmer who was effortlessly carrying in two crates of non-alcoholic cider, one hoisted onto her broad shoulder, the other held with one hand. “Ms. Applejack. Nice to see you. Things are going well, I hope?”

“Sure,” AJ replied, not even setting down the weight while engaging in a casual conversation. “Listen, Sunset tells me that you have a heck of a time finding a contractor to do one of the school’s bathrooms?”

The principal nodded while looking up at the taller woman. “On the second floor. You know the one. It hasn’t been remodeled since before you went to school here.”

“Shucks, that bad, huh? Well, mah cousin owns a hardware store, and he’s getting in new stock for toilets and sinks and such. He says he’d be happy to donate the old ones. Better than throwing ‘em out. They’re nothin’ fancy, but they’re practically new and do the job. Been sitting on shelves for years. If ya give me the thumbs up, ah can install ‘em for y'all over winter break. Should only take me a couple days.”

“That’s very kind of you to offer, Applejack,” Celestia said carefully.

“’Course. CHS has always been good to us. Happy to give something back.” Applejack then began guffawing. “Besides, ah can probably do the work better than some rando ya hire from the Yeller Pages. Ah worked mah way through business school as a plumber’s assistant. … Probably explains why ah’m a better plumber than a businesswoman.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true,” Celestia replied pleasantly. “I always appreciate it when alumni take an interest in helping the school. Why don’t you come by my office next week? We’ll talk details then.”

“Sure thing,” AJ replied, giving Sunset a wink, and went over to the students. “Alright, pipsqueaks. Why dont’cha take a break with some refreshments?”

Sunset looked over the crowd as her students happily got some drinks and began chatting amongst themselves. “Pippsqueaks! That’d be a great name for my subscribers,” Pipp was telling her sister.

“Sounds cringe,” Zipp replied flatly.

Meanwhile, Applejack made her way over to Rarity after dropping off the crates, put an arm around the fashionista’s waist and pulled her in close. “Hi, beautiful,” she said and gave her a kiss on the lips.

Rarity began to blush and giggle. “Oh, my. Darling, not in front of the kids.”

After that public display of affection, Sunset’s eyes automatically wandered over to Sprout. Sure enough, he’d taken one look, pulled out his sketchbook and was already furiously drawing something that was almost definitely not PG-13.

She turned back to Celestia, who she could see seething beneath her skin. “Now, here’s the thing …”

But before Sunset could finish her sentence, Celestia stepped past her towards the students. “May I have your attention for a moment, everyone?”

No! Shit, I had more prepared. Please don’t do this! But with the attention of all the students now turning on them, there was little else Sunset could do but stand behind Celestia.

“I came here today because I have something to tell the drama club.”

Pipp and Rufus gave each other a look that was caught only by a few in the class. The drama club president and vice-president made one step forward each and looked at the principal with poorly disguised apprehension.

Celestia drew in a breath to speak and … hesitated. Sunset saw her look around at the students, most of them smiling from enjoying their break after a hectic but also fun first rehearsal. She looked at the clipboard in her hands with the flier. She then dropped her shoulders almost imperceptibly and exhaled before speaking. “I came here to tell you that … I’ve never read Der Schimmelreiter, so I’m very much looking forward to seeing your rendition.” Glancing over in Sunset’s direction, she added: “I’m sure your temporary drama club advisor will save me a seat for the premiere.”

“Best seat in the house for you, Principal,” Sunset promised immediately.

Beaming and entirely unprompted, Pipp and Rufus took a stage bow in perfect unison. “Thank you, Principal Celestia. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed,” Pipp said before turning around to the rest of the gang. “Three cheers for Principal Celestia! Pipp, pipp, hooray!”

Celestia nodded with a smile that appeared perfectly natural as the students cheered her. “Thank you. Don’t let me keep you from your rehearsal,” she said and turned around, but not before adding: “Ms. Shimmer, a word. Outside.”

Sunset actually felt a shiver down her spine from the raw amount of steel Celestia had put into that last word. So she gave her class two thumbs up coupled with a nervous smile and followed silently.

Rather than stopping in the hallway, Celestia actually kept walking until they both emerged from the school building and into the backyard, which was pretty well deserted except for the noise of the sports clubs on the track field some distance away.

“Celest…” Sunset began, but Celestia held up her index finger to make her shut up.

Taking a narrow silver case from her jacket pocket, Celestia took out a cigarette and lit up.

Sunset had never in her life at CHS, be it as a student or teacher, seen the principal smoke. But rather than point that out, she had the good sense to remain silent while Celestia walked up and down the grass and took a couple of long drags.

When the cigarette was about halfway gone, she finally stopped and said: “Well played, Sunset.”

“Thank you?” Sunset replied with a sheepish smile. “Machiavellian scheming isn’t a skill set I’m particularly proud of these days, but it’s one I’m good with. Sort of like when the Mane-iac had her redemption arc and started helping the Power Ponies outwit the criminal underworld of Maretropolis.”

“I don’t read comic books, Sunset,” Celestia replied flatly. “But I get the gist. You set everything up so I’d look like the bad guy in front of everyone if I went in there and dissolved the drama club today.”

“Or,” Sunset pointed out, “I gave you the opportunity to look like a hero if you saved the drama club, which you did and I knew you would.” Or at the very least hoped you would. “Choose to look at it that way.”

Celestia shook her head. “There’s just one thing I can’t figure out. How did you even know I was gonna give them the news today?”

“Ah,” Sunset said, clicking her tongue. “Funny story, I was gonna tell you about that. Did you know that if you type in the school’s IP address directly into a web browser, rather than the homepage URL, it completely circumvents the login page for the teachers? I mean, any recent college graduate could theoretically navigate to your personal calendar that way if they got a teacher to tell them the right subdomains. You might wanna get IT on that.”

“Sparkle,” Celestia said with a frown.

“I cannot confirm or deny the involvement of any white hat hackers based out of Canterlot U.” However, what I can’t deny is the fact that you look fucking terrifying when you blow cigarette smoke out of your nostrils like that. Could give a dragon a run for its money. “Would a deluxe cake set from Sugarcube Corner help in asking forgiveness in lieu of permission?”

Celestia took one last long drag from her cigarette before putting it out. “It’d be a start,” she said and reentered the school.

Sunset also eventually went back inside to rejoin her class for rehearsal, right after the shaking had stopped.

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Sunset was rapidly approaching, tinting the western skies in hues of reds and oranges. Not that Ms. Sunset could tell, seeing as she was stuck in the cramped, windowless backroom of the chemistry classroom.

Sighing, she loosened the string that had held her hair in a ponytail for the duration of her task, letting her long hair fall free once more as she picked up the last set of beakers and test tubes to be put away.

“Ms. Shimmer.”

“Gah!” Startled by the sudden voice, she nearly dropped the fragile containers but just about managed to hold on to the wooden rack they’d been placed in. She shot the man standing in the door a look. “Why do you always sneak up on people like that?”

“Apologies,” the man with the long, white beard said while she stowed the teaching implements safely away in a cabinet. “It’s a force of habit from my youth. … I could wear some bells on me if that would make it better?”

“With you, I’m not actually sure they’d jingle unless you wanted them to.”

He cocked his head slightly and furrowed his brows, almost as if he was considering how to make that work exactly. Eventually, though, he simply shrugged. “At any rate, this will be all for today. I appreciate the help, Ms. Shimmer. It’s not often that Principal Celestia asks one of the teachers to assist me with my more mundane tasks. It leaves me free to catch up on the more important things.”

“Yeah, she’s a regular philanthropist, our principal,” Sunset replied sardonically. “So while I was washing up all of Mr. Turner’s chemistry kits, you were doing what exactly?”

“Checking all the salt shakers in the cafeteria, of course,” he replied with an absolutely straight face.

“… Right.” Sunset began packing up her stuff. “Hey, can I ask you something? I know I’ve long since passed the point where this question wouldn’t have been awkward, but what’s your name?”

He shrugged. “Lars Writs.”

She turned and looked at him, blinking a couple of times.

“Something the matter, Ms. Shimmer?” he asked as he sat on a nearby stool and folded his hands in his lap.

“No, it’s just … mostly everybody just knows you as the ‘Phantom in the Halls.’ So I guess I wasn’t really expecting a straight answer like that, if that makes sense.”

He nodded sagely. “I’m aware of the nickname I go by among the student body. It suits me. I think most of the faculty only knows me by that name as well. Names are like coats. As we go through life, we tend to collect a few of them, and we put on whichever one suits the occasion.”

“Well, I’ve only ever had one name, unless you count the tag for my defunct gaming channel.”

Mr. Writs squinted and looked her straight in the eye. “Are you quite sure about that, Ms. Flanksy?”

Sunset opened her mouth to respond, then just snapped her jaws shut and shook her head.

“And even the same name can be different names,” he went on while stroking his beard thoughtfully. “Do you not think there’s a difference between Celestia calling you Ms. Shimmer and a student calling you Ms. Sunset? And then, of course, there’s the names not of our own choosing that others bestow on us. Princess of the Fall Formal. Biggest Meanie of Junior Year. … Anon-A-Miss.”

“Alright, you made your point,” Sunset said, a little unsettled. “You seem to know a lot about me, Lars.”

He shook his head slowly. “No more so than about anyone else who walks my halls. There’s just a lot more to know about you comparatively.” He tapped his ear. “The halls speak if you know what to listen for. For most, it’s only whispers. But your names, they echo through the hallways as if they were being shouted down from the stars above sometimes.”

“Well,” she replied, stepping closer to the door. “Drama is a teenage girl’s game. I’m just a teacher now, just the one name.”

He nodded at that. “And I’m just a janitor. But we don’t always get to choose when fate calls us by one of our other names.” He cocked his head slightly, looking into the distance, almost as if he was listening for something. “Seeing as you are a teacher, would you do an old man a favor and lock up the library on your way out? I’ll do the rest of the building.”

“Sure.”

“My old knees and I thank you, Ms. Shimmer.”

Sunset made her way over to the library annex and began the laborious process of checking all the aisles on the second floor and closing the windows. She then repeated the process on the ground floor, which had no windows on account of light being supplied by the overhead glass dome. So it was a slightly faster, albeit no less dull, affair. All was quiet, until a flash of light caught the edge of her vision.

Coming to the door of the side room near the exit, she could hear the telltale whirring and clacking of the photocopier for a bit until it stopped. Approaching quietly, she observed a young man with green hair standing in front of the machine. “Why did you stop? Come on,” he said, spreading his hands and looking at the blinking lights on the control panel.

Sunset walked up behind him, looked over his shoulder and gave the machine a kick.

“Whoa!” Startled, the young man jumped to the side just as the copier sprang back to life and continued its run next to her. “Ms. Sunset! You scared the crap out of me.”

“Sorry, Hitch,” she said, “I guess sneaking up on people by accident happens more easily than I thought. Anyway, the thing always freaks out if you set it to more than ten copies. A round of percussive maintenance usually does the trick.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

Sunset lightly furrowed her brow. “It’s unusual for you to still be in school after lunch, much less this late.”

“Yeah, I know.” He scratched his head. “But someone recently gave me the advice that there’s more to school than just doing the homework. So I rearranged things a bit to have at least one day of the week devoted to school activities.” Grabbing a piece of paper from the tray, he handed it to his teacher.

Sunset turned over the still warm page in her hand and looked at what seemed to be the finalized version of the poster for their play, an artistic rendition of Sunny and Pipp in full costume in front of a crashing wave taking up most of the center space. “Looks awesome.”

Hitch nodded. “I know, but I can only take credit for the layout. Can you believe Sprout drew that in an afternoon?”

“I can, actually.” Silently, she added: Harder to believe they’ve got clothes on. “Are you done? I’m about to lock up here. Wouldn’t wanna lock you in.”

Hitch nodded and began stowing the posters away in his backpack. “You wouldn’t actually lock in a student by accident, would you?”

“This may come as a shock to you,” Sunset replied dryly, “but teachers are fallible human beings that can make mistakes. I’ve never locked a student in here myself as far as I know, but I’ve been the student locked in. Well, technically on the roof. Come on.”

“What were you doing on the library roof?” Hitch asked as he followed her outside. “Isn’t that off-limits?”

“It is now for that very reason,” Sunset replied with a chuckle as she locked the main library doors. “Luckily, it was a warm summer night, and there was school the next day. I’m just glad it didn’t happen on a Friday. And to answer your first question, I was singing a song.”

He gave her an incredulous look. “On the library roof? Were you shooting a music video or something?”

She shrugged. “No, I was just feeling it. Don’t give me that look, this was literally the year before TikTok came out. My generation, we just used to randomly burst out into song in odd places for no reason.”

Thankfully, Hitch changed the subject as they walked outside together. “I was gonna ask, how is the dog?”

“He’s doing fine,” Sunset replied, stopping at her car. She considered for a moment and then offered: “Wanna see him? I’m actually about to pick him up from the clinic. He was getting the last of the stitches out today.”

There wasn’t even a hint of hesitation in the initial answer. “Sure! … If it’s alright. I mean, I don’t want to get you in trouble, Ms. Sunset.”

Sunset opened the car door with a chuckle. “School day’s over. This is just me giving a student a ride, so I’m pretty sure this one doesn’t constitute a possible felony charge. Hop in.” As she pulled onto the main road, the interior of the car was silent for a bit before Sunset’s curiosity got the better of her. “Hitch, I think it’s great that you’re making more time for school activities. Why are you working so much after school anyway?”

The teen turned to look out the passenger window, avoiding his teacher’s side glance. “Ms. Sunset, the last time we talked about this, you said you’d only make this your problem if my grades started slipping.”

“I remember.”

“Have they?”

“… No,” Sunset admitted after a moment.

“Has the deal changed then?”

Sunset sighed and kept her eyes on the road after that.

Ten minutes later, they’d arrived at their destination. When the double doors to the animal clinic swung open, they were both greeted by a bark and the scampering of little paws on tiled floor.

Sunset got on one knee and held out her arms as the green puppy ran straight past her and towards Hitch. “Nice to see you, too,” she muttered dryly.

The puppy gave a few happy barks and jumped once or twice up on Hitch’s leg, who knelt down with a smile and gave the dog a few scratches behind the ears. “Hey, buddy. You look healthy. Has Ms. Sunset gotten around to giving you a name yet?”

“It’s Sparky,” Sunset said as she got back up.

“Sparky,” Hitch said, and the dog gave a happy bark at hearing the name while wagging his tail. “I like it. It suits you. Sparky Sparkeroni.”

“Sparky, is it?” Fluttershy asked as she came out of the back office into the otherwise empty reception area in response to the commotion, her hands in the pockets of her white lab coat. “Can I put that on the official paperwork then?”

“Yes, you can,” Sunset replied, standing next to her friend. “Don’t read too much into it,” she added after a pause.

*Stare*

Sunset fidgeted a bit, then took her friend by the arm to pull her out of earshot of her student who was busy playing with his canine friend. “Look,” she whispered, “do I realize it’s weird that I named my new dog after my ex-girlfriend? Yes. Yes, I very much do.”

*Stare*

“It’s just that I kept calling her for advice about dogs, and at some point he just started responding to the name, probably because he kept hearing me say it while talking about him.”

*Stare*

“It doesn’t mean Twilight and I are getting back together or anything. We made a mutual decision after college, because we both needed to focus on our respective futures. Now would you please turn that off?” Sunset booped her friend’s nose gently, leading Fluttershy to involuntarily cross her eyes for a moment before shaking her head slightly.

“Alright, if you say so. I’m just glad that you remained friends this time around, not like the first time you broke up when, you know.”

“You mean that time where we got into a shouting match in front of all of you, and I hurt her feelings so badly that I fled to another continent for half a year out of shame rather than having to face her?” Sunset asked, remorseful of infractions long forgiven but not forgotten. “Yeah, I do know. I do know all too well.”

“Hey, Ms. Sunset,” Hitch interrupted, “he seems to be a little restless. Is it alright if I take Sparky for a walk around the block?”

Sunset smiled and went to pat Hitch’s shoulder. “Of course, Hitch.” Just then, her index finger brushed against some exposed skin at the back of his neck, and Sunset immediately tensed up. It was as if she’d been struck by lightning, and yet the feeling wasn’t altogether unfamiliar.

Broken and disjointed images flashed in her mind while her head spun. … a hand putting some money into a box and shoving it under a bed … suddenly the point of view changed, staring into a dark room behind metal bars … just as suddenly a kitchen table with a mountain of official looking documents on it … and then just darkness.

“Ms. Sunset?” Hitch’s concerned voice brought her back to reality. “You alright? You just kinda zoned out there for a moment.”

Sunset put on the most convincing smile she could muster and replied: “Yeah, just had a long day.” She pulled a small pack of dog treats out of her pocket, the rustle of which immediately had Sparky barking in excitement, and handed it to Hitch. “You go take that walk with Sparky while I finish up the paperwork here with Ms. Fluttershy. Thanks.”

Hitch nodded and beckoned the puppy to follow him outside as he opened the doors.

Meanwhile, Sunset just stood there in a complete daze until Fluttershy walked up to her, concern written all over her face. “Sunset,” she whispered, “did you just?”

“Did I what? Don’t know what you mean.”

Fluttershy frowned at her friend. “Bullshit,” she stated with the certainty of someone pointing out that water was indeed wet. “We all know that look you get when it happens. What did you see?”

“I … I don’t know, Flutters,” she replied, pulling out her geode pendant and staring hard at it. It remained as dull and inert as it had for years. “It felt … familiar but different. I used to get something coherent. This was just … fragments.”

Fluttershy pulled up the sleeve on her lab coat and held out her forearm. The two women stared at each other for a moment, and Fluttershy nodded.

Hesitantly, Sunset reached out her hand while hanging on to the geode with the other and touched her friend’s skin.

“Anything?” Fluttershy asked after a moment.

Sunset shook her head and let go. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Well,” Fluttershy said, pulling down her sleeve again, “maybe it’s like an old flashlight, you know? Sometimes it’ll turn on for a brief moment before sputtering out again, even if the batteries are empty.”

“Yeah,” Sunset replied, “probably something like that.” Or maybe fate just walked up and started screaming in my ear.

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“Sunset! Just the woman I was looking for,” Cranky said as he entered the otherwise empty teachers’ lounge with a stack of papers under his arm.

“Well, you found me in my extremely secret hideout where no teacher ever comes,” Sunset replied before taking another bite from her sandwich while not taking her eyes off the education magazine she was reading.

“Let me ask you something that would have been extremely inappropriate to ask when you were my student,” he said while heading over to the counter to pour himself a cup of coffee. “Are you a masochist?”

Sunset actually thought about that for a moment. “You mean sexually? I don’t mind being cuffed to the bed or a light spanking on occasion, but I’d classify myself more as a pillow princess.”

Cranky guffawed at that. “Okay, not the answer I was expecting, but that’s interesting.”

“What can I say? Gladys must be starting to rub off on me,” Sunset pointed out. “Still inappropriate, though, seeing as you’re currently my direct supervisor.”

Cranky sat down across the table from her with his coffee mug. “For the record, I wasn’t asking about your proclivities. I was talking about this game of chicken you’re playing with Celestia where she comes up with backhanded punishments for you because she can’t be seen undermining one of her teachers directly in front of the students, and yet you never seem to learn your lesson.”

“Ah.” Sunset grimaced, pushing her lunch plate aside. “Heard about my little stunt with the drama club, have you?”

“Everyone has at this point. Don’t worry about it too much. Celly really likes you for some reason. She’ll come around.”

“Oh, I know. She’s not the first Celestia who’s had to put up with my antics. Trust me, I did much worse by the last one, and she still forgave me. I do feel a little bad about going behind her back on this one, though.”

“Well, if you wanna make the apology process go a little smoother, I’ve got an opportunity for you. You know there’s home visits taking place at this time of year?”

“I thought that was a problem for the homeroom teachers.”

“It usually is. But Cheerilee is out sick this week, which makes it Celestia’s problem. And since I’m currently acting vice-principal, our wise leader has deigned to make it my problem.”

“Let me skip ahead in that thought process. Crap rolls downhill, and I’m at the bottom of the cuddle pile not only by virtue of being the newest hire but also for having recently pissed off management, so you’re about to make it my problem.”

“Smart girl. I managed to reschedule most of them, but I need you to take two.” He put three folders on the table in front of Sunset.

“I’m not a math teacher, but I see three student files here.”

“Pipp and Zipp you can check off together. Their mother is extremely busy and a nightmare with scheduling. But seeing as you just played the princess in shining armor by saving Pipp’s school year, you should have this one in the bag.”

“And the other?”

“Hitch. There’s … different reasons why this one needs to be taken care of and can’t be rescheduled,” he said carefully.

“I’m in,” Sunset said immediately, grabbing Hitch’s file and flipping it open.

Cranky raised an eyebrow at that but said nothing.

“Wow, this file is a mess,” Sunset muttered while scanning over all the crossed out sections and hand-written annotations. “The addresses don’t even match. Mother’s residence: Unknown, presumed abroad? Father’s residence: … Mare’s Island. Isn’t that?” She looked up at Cranky.

He rubbed a hand over the stubble of his five o'clock shadow. “I believe the exact address is Cellblock D, Cell 89. Doing ten to fifteen for environmental crimes. It was a little before your time, I think. Maybe you haven’t heard of it.”

“Butch Trailblazer,” Sunset said, remembering a term paper on local history she’d written in her second semester at Canterlot U. “CEO of Trailblazer Industries. Chemical spill at Froggy Bottom Bay. Investigation led to the EPA taking a closer look at the company’s dangerous waste storage policies. … That’s Hitch’s dad?”

Cranky nodded and gestured towards the folder. “There’s like a three-page CPS form at the back that needs to be signed off on by a teacher.”

Sunset leaned back in her chair. “… Fuck. That explains a lot, actually.”

The veteran teacher looked at her, then frowned and shook his head. “You know what? This was a bad idea. Forget it, kid. It’s a lot to ask of a newbie, maybe too much. If you take the girls, that’s already a huge help. I’ll take this one.” He closed the folder and began sliding it back towards himself across the table.

Sunset’s hand flashed forward, pressing down on the file from the other side and preventing Cranky from pulling it out of her reach. “No,” she said, locking eyes with him. “No, I got this.”

“You sure, kiddo?”

She nodded silently while holding his gaze firmly.

Cranky wordlessly moved his jaw and finally let go of the folder. Standing up from the table, he walked over to Sunset. “I know we all like to joke around about how crappy our job is. But this is the kind of stuff that genuinely sucks.” He lightly punched Sunset’s shoulder and left the room with a sigh.

Sunset sat quietly for a few moments before picking up the files and also exiting the room, deciding that she needed some air and time to think. This has got to be connected to the vision I saw, right? If only it hadn’t been so fragmented.

“Ms. Sunset! You got a minute?”

Sunset turned to see one of her favorite students come running up and forced her mind to go back into teacher mode. “Sunny. What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping to ask you a couple questions about something,” the young girl said brightly as she caught up with her waiting teacher.

“Of course. Something you didn’t understand in class? I know the irregular verbs are hard to wrap your head around at first.”

“Actually, this isn’t about German, or history.” Sunny looked to the left and right to make sure they were alone in the hall before adding in conspiratorial whisper: “I was gonna ask about something you mentioned, Clover’s Second Law of Arcanodynamics.”

Sunset now also checked around for curious ears before answering quietly: “What did we say about magic talk at school?”

“I just want some clarification on a few things you brought up in passing, that’s all,” Sunny replied innocently.

“If you wanna learn about magic, I can recommend a really good book to you,” Sunset said and began walking down the hall.

Sunny’s eyes sparkled as she fell in step beside her teacher. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Sunset dead-panned, “it’s called the Dungeon Master’s Guide, 5^th Edition. Real page-turner.”

“Come on, Ms. Sunset. Please?”

Rolling her eyes and seeing a couple students rounding the corner ahead, Sunset steered her student into an empty classroom and closed the door behind them. “Why would you need to know? I told you that there’s no more magic in this world.” Although I’m starting to reevaluate that statement, which makes me even less inclined to tell you about it, she added quietly in her mind.

“All the more reason that it can’t hurt,” Sunny pointed out shrewdly. “I’m just interested in the theory. You’re a teacher. Shouldn’t you encourage intellectual curiosity in your students?”

Sunset crossed her arms in front of her. “Nice try. Last time I checked, I was hired by this school as a history teacher, not a magic teacher, which is a good thing on so many levels. I was barely even a passable student of magic, never mind a teacher.”

“What? That’s insane!” Sunny seemed genuinely flabbergasted by that admission. “I’ve seen what you can do. You’re incredible.”

“I didn’t say I was bad at magic. I said I was bad at being a student.” She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “You’re not gonna let this go, are you?”

“Not likely, and not anytime soon,” Sunny stated in such a way that Sunset couldn’t help but admire the backbone it took to say that to a teacher straight up.

Her eyes wandered over to the student files she was still holding, and that’s when a terrible idea came to her. “You’ve known Hitch for a long time, right?”

“Uhm, yeah, I guess,” Sunny replied, seemingly confused by the sudden change in topic. “We’ve known each other since kindergarten.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” Sunset’s mouth said before her brain had a chance to hit the brakes. “I’ll give you one hour of magic tutoring if you answer some questions I have about Hitch.”

“You want to know about Hitch?”

What the fuck are you doing, Sunset!? Don’t drag her into this. What would your response have been if someone walked up to you and just started asking questions about your friends? She shook her head. “Never mind. I don’t know what I was thinking. Forget I said anyth…”

“Okay!”

Sunset looked up and stared at Sunny in disbelief. “Just like that? You must really want to learn about magic.”

“What? No! … I mean, yes, I do,” she admitted. “But that’s not it. If this was anybody else asking, it would be really weird and creepy. But since it’s you, you must have a very good reason. You wouldn’t ask me to just tattle on my friend for no reason, so you probably wanna help him.” She shrugged. “I trust you.”

Sunset raised an eyebrow at that. “What did I do to inspire that kind of blind faith in you?”

Sunny made a face as if Sunset had just asked the dumbest question she’d ever heard. “Really? You literally fought a kaiju-sized shadow monster that threatened to kill my dad and destroy my hometown.”

“Oh yeah, that,” Sunset mused wryly. “I should list that as a reference next time I apply for a bank loan.”

“Right. Even if I disregard the fact that you’re basically a superhero, I know what you did for Izzy and Pipp. So yeah, I trust you implicitly.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Sunset said, resigned to her fate, “but a deal is a deal, so you can stop buttering me up before I turn into a piece of toast. Alright, when do you want to do this?”

Grinning like a Cheshire Cat, Sunny pulled a notebook and pencil out of her backpack and sat down at a desk in the front row of the classroom. “I’ve got a free period right now.”

“Okay, let’s do it,” Sunset said without much enthusiasm and began to write out a formula on the blackboard. “You wanted to know about Clover’s Second Law of Arcanodynamics,” she began and immediately wrote a second equation that involved more than a few pentagrams next to the first. “It actually derives from Star Swirl’s General Theory of Chronomancy. So you kinda have to understand both if you really want to get to the center of the tootsie pop. Hope you paid attention in Ms. Harshwhinny’s class, cause there’s a lot of math involved with magic, and in a Base 12 system no less.” Sunset turned around to look at Sunny. “You, uh, don’t have to raise your hand. It’s just you and me here.”

“Right,” Sunny said, lowering her arm. “What’s a Base 12 system?”

Sunset pursed her lips. She’s a sophomore in high school, she told herself, not a magic prodigy who learned calculus from a demi-goddess at age seven. Keep it simple, stupid. “So, usually when we do math, we use the decimal system, right? We call that Base 10, because everything more or less revolves around the number ten. That’s not quite correct, actually it uses ten digits from zero to nine. You grew up in the digital age. Can you tell me how computers do math?”

“With ones and zeroes?” Sunny replied hesitantly after a moment's thought.

“Exactly. Just two numbers, which is why we call that the binary system or Base 2.”

“Oh, I get it,” Sunny said and nodded.

Sunset couldn’t help but smile at that. Watching the light bulb go on was her favorite part of being a teacher.

Sunny then looked at her hands, furrowed her brow and balled them into fists to approximate hooves in a way that Sunset honestly found adorable. “So … why would ponies come up with a Base 12 system? I could understand Base 2 or Base 4. … Maybe Base 6 if you’re a pegasus?”

Chuckling somewhat at the logic she was getting at, Sunset explained: “It’s not about the number of digits you have available for counting purposes. Most ponies in Equestria actually use a decimal system in their day to day lives. But we use Base 12 in Magic Theory because twelve is an inherently magical number.”

“Ohhhhh, … Why?”

Sunset took a deep breath, looked over her shoulder at the equations she had written, shook her head and picked up an eraser. Once the slate was clean again, she wrote ‘Numerology 101’ and said: “How about we start with the basics?”

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Sunset had parked her car a couple blocks away, knowing full well how narrow and winding the alleys of the Canterlot docks could be at night, not to mention the danger of accidentally running over someone who was sleeping off their poison of choice, like the guy snoring behind a dumpster to her left. Unless you came by motorcycle, it was better to go in on foot.

Second reason was that it allowed her to take Sparky for his walk en route to her destination. The small dog had recovered well and was now a bundle of energy that Sunset barely knew how to contain. Although in this setting, he kept close to her at all times with an unusual quiet about him in the dark and unfamiliar surrounding.

When they rounded a corner, a plethora of lights, sounds and smells greeted them.

“Roar!!!”

With a yelp of surprise, Sparky darted behind his owner and looked out fearfully from behind her boot. Sunset leaned down to give him a reassuring scratch behind the ears. “It’s alright,” she said in a soothing voice. “It’s not gonna hurt you. The only thing it could possibly assault is your sensibilities.”

She looked up at the animatronic dinosaur head mounted above the door and underneath the garish neon sign that proudly proclaimed this place to be ‘Big Al’s Bar & Grill.’ Sunset waved her arm to activate the motion sensor again, and the plastic allosaurus head moved side to side, roared again, and only then did the jaw briefly open with the squeak of a rusty hinge.

Sunset pushed the mismatched saloon style doors open and walked confidently inside. This place had not changed at all. The scuffed wooden floor, the second-hand diner style booths, the ratty pool table in the back nobody used next to the broken jukebox. It was like she’d traveled back in time. The din of conversation immediately quieted down among the present sailors, dockworkers and bikers as she entered. Even if she hadn’t been aware that every head had turned her way, the low whistles and murmured remarks were a dead giveaway. Paying the other patrons no mind, she walked over to the bar.

“Well, well, well,” the bald, thin man standing behind the bar began. He was mustering Sunset up and down with his one good eye, the other being covered with a black eye patch. He turned his head, showing off the cobra tattoo running along his neck, and spit into a bowl by his feet with a resounding clang. “Look what the cat dragged in. Lil’ Miss Sunshine, as I live and breathe. Didn’t expect to see you walk through those doors tonight.”

“Hi, Snake,” Sunset greeted him cordially. “The big man in?”

He nodded his head in response. “Tinkering in the back with a new recipe or some-such. You know how he gets when he’s ‘in the zone.’ I’ll let him know you’re here.” Before turning around and heading into the kitchen, he grabbed a bottle of root beer from underneath the bar and slid it over to Sunset who deftly caught the bottle, cracked it open on the edge of the bar and took a swig in one smooth motion.

As she leaned on the bar to wait, Sunset could pick out a voice that seemed familiar and wasn’t trying particularly hard to whisper. “Damn, look at dat ass. I’d like to order a side of that, if you know what I mean. Come on, baby. Bend over a little more.”

A second voice from the same direction shushed the man. “Hey, man. Keep it down. Don’t you know who that is?”

“That’s the best piece of TnA that’s walked into this dump all year, is what that is. I don’t care what name those tits are attached to. Why? You know her?”

“That’s Lil’ Miss Sunshine, you idiot,” the second man hissed. “Now shut the fuck up before Big Al hears you.”

“That’s Lil’ Miss Sunshine???” Sunset could practically hear the man do a double take behind her back. “… Well, I stand by what I said. She sure filled out nicely in all the right places.”

Sunset finally put down her drink, turned and began walking in the direction of the corner booth where the voices were coming from.

The voice of reason among the two was in the process of delivering another warning when he saw her sauntering up to their table out of the corner of his eye. “Oh shit, she’s coming over here,” he mumbled into his beard before forcing a smile.

“Hello, boys,” Sunset said, putting a hand on her hip and striking a deliberately provocative pose, “long time no see.”

“Indeed,” the first man said with a nasty smirk. “You know, I totally didn’t recognize you when you walked in without that resting bitch face you used to have. You got surgery for that?”

“Hm,” Sunset replied coolly, “didn’t expect to see you here, Carl. I figured you would have drowned years ago on account of how bad a fisherman you are. What happened? The sea find you so repulsive that she spit you back out?”

He grinned and leaned back. “Tell you what, why don’t you come over here and sit on papa’s lap for old times’ sake? I’ll tell you all about my adventures on the sea, sweetcheecks.”

At this point, the man with the functioning brain cell between them slammed his hands on the table and stood up. “Alright, fuck this shit, I’m out. You’re on your own, man.” He picked up his beer and told Sunset in passing: “You tell Big Al, whatever happens here, I tried to stop it.”

Sunset waited for the man to leave before turning back to the clean-shaven fisherman in his striped shirt. “Just you and me now, Carl.”

“Just the way I like it. Too bad for you, though. I know you like an audience.”

“Oh, we can give them a show if you want.” Sunset put one hand on the table, stuck out her hips and smacked her ass loud enough for everyone in the bar to hear it. “Go on, give it a try. Just keep in mind how long you were wearing the cast for after the last time you tried to get cute with me.”

Carl’s greasy smile vanished as the two of them stared each other down. “Careful what you wish for, missy. You’re not a little girl anymore,” he said, his voice taking on a darker tone, “you think you can just walk in here looking like this?” He stared at her chest without even trying to disguise it for a moment before going back to locking eyes with her. “And talk like that? One of these days, someone is gonna call your bluff.”

Sunset wasn’t fazed. “I deal with teenagers all day. I don’t blink. The only question here is: Are you feeling lucky tonight, punk?”

There was a tense silence as he mulled over his next move, and Sunset could see some sweat forming on his brow. Suddenly, Carl sat bolt upright, his eyes going wide as he began stare in a panicky fear at something above her head. Sunset knew. She’d heard the heavy footsteps stopping just behind her. “Oh, heya, Big Al!” Carl squeaked while sweating buckets. “We were just catching up.”

Sunset frowned, somewhat disappointed at having her prey being spooked by a larger predator. The large presence behind her remained in a stoic silence. It felt like a fun fencing match of barbs and dares had just been brought to an abrupt conclusion by a wrestler coming in and body-slamming one of the fencers.

Carl folded like a lawn chair on the spot. “So, uh, I think I’ve had enough for the night.” He stood up and fumbled through his pockets to pay for his drink. He took one more look and unceremoniously dumped his entire pocket full of small change on the table. “Actually, let me take care of my tab for the month here. This ought to cover it. Enjoy the family reunion, you two.”

Sunset watched the man make a beeline for the exit and vanish into the night to the roar of a cheap dinosaur prop before turning around. She found herself staring at a hairy barrel chest covered by a black leather vest and splotchy apron. Turning her eyes upward, she thought she spotted a little more gray in the scraggly beard than she remembered before meeting two dark brown eyes framed underneath greasy bangs. “I had him handled, you know,” she said simply.

The large man said nothing before throwing out his arms with surprising speed given his size and wrapping her up in a crushing bear hug.

“Okay, it’s good to see you, too,” Sunset wheezed as she felt her feet lift off the ground and her lungs expelling about half their air from the sudden compression. “Ribs, ribs!!!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Sunshine,” he rumbled and put her down immediately. “Look at you, you’re skin and bones! Snake, can we get the girl something to eat? Hm? And who is this cutie pie?”

“That adorable bundle of energy currently assaulting your big toe goes by the name Sparky,” Sunset informed him while gingerly checking for broken ribs.

Sparky had begun growling at what he perceived to be an attack on his owner. Big Al seemed unconcerned by the bite marks on his sandal-clad feet and knelt down. “Come here.” The dog sniffed carefully at the offered hand, licked a finger and then gave a happy bark as Big Al picked him up. He looked at Sunset with the dopiest grin. “Oh my gosh, he is so cute! Look, I can hold him in one hand.”

Sunset let the scene play out, not at all surprised at the sight of a 6′ 2″ bear of a man going gaga over a small puppy.

“Look, guys!” He announced to the entire bar. “I have a grandson! Drinks on the house tonight!” Sparky barked in confirmation from his perch overlooking the entire bar from Big Al’s palm.

The patrons cheered at that, one of them raising a glass and shouting: “Three cheers for Lil’ Miss Sunshine!”

Sunset rolled her eyes at that. “How does everyone here remember that stupid nickname? I don’t think I even know half the guys in here tonight.”

“I dunno,” Big Al rumbled before casting a guilty glance to the side.

Sunset followed his line of sight and found a large photo of her fifteen-year-old self looking back at her, with an apron around her waist, a massive scowl on her face and a caption that read: ‘Employee of the Year: Lil’ Miss Sunshine – Always serving you with a frown.’

“Seriously, Al? It’s been years since I waited tables here. Why haven’t you taken that down?”

He shrugged. “Never had a better Employee of the Year since then.”

“You don’t have an Employee of the Year, period,” she replied flatly. “You had that made for my 16^th birthday.”

“Order up,” Snake suddenly said as he walked in between the two of them and sat two plates down on the table before retreating back to his bar.

Sunset caught one whiff and felt her mouth watering already. “Oh my god, is that your Veggie Cheesesteak? All is forgiven.” She sat down to dig in immediately. “Mmmhm, ohmygosh, hm, that’s sho good, I mished thish,” she moaned around her first bite and closed her eyes.

Big Al sat down across from her, quietly waiting for her foodgasm to pass as he rubbed Sparky’s belly. After a couple more bites and subsequent moans from Sunset, he asked: “Where did you find this little guy?”

Finally opening her eyes again and remembering to swallow before speaking, she replied: “Well, it’s more that he found me. I guess taking in strays just runs in this particular found family.” She could see him beam at that. “How are you and Mike doing?”

“Oh.” His face fell considerably. “Not so good. We … broke up.”

“What!? Why? You guys were such a cute couple.”

“Well, he cheated on me.”

“Oh, Al.” Sunset laid a sympathetic hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head. “It’s alright. Don’t worry about it. I guess I just can’t pick ‘em.”

“Well, you’re wonderful, and you deserve better. If he can’t see that, that’s his loss.”

He patted her hand and gave a sad smile. “Enough about me. What brings you here tonight?”

Sunset sighed and, in lieu of answering, pulled a heavy book from her bag and plopped it on the table.

Big Al read the title and furrowed his brows. “California Legal Code? You’re not in any serious trouble, are you?”

“I’m always in trouble in some way, you know that. But no. I was doing some research, and I felt like I needed a real world perspective. I’ve got this student, you see.”

He crossed his arms and listened attentively. “Go on.”

“Well, I guess it’s just that I see a lot of myself in him, you know. Parents not in the picture, desperately trying to make up for something that happened in the past, working after school just to make ends meet. Sound familiar?”

“I can see the connection,” he said with a grave nod.

Sunset fidgeted for a bit and then decided the best course of action was just to dive right in with the question that had been playing on her mind all day. “I turned out alright, didn’t I? In the end, at least.”

She hadn’t been prepared for the knot that formed in her stomach when he didn’t reply right away. “Of course you did, it’s just that …” He gave her a sad look. “Wait here a moment. There’s something I need to show you.”

Sunset quietly watched him get up and walk to the stairs that she knew led to his room upstairs. She looked at the remains of her cheesesteak and didn’t feel hungry anymore, instead keeping her hands busy by giving Sparky some scratches who had come over and was looking at her with big puppy eyes.

After a while, Al came back downstairs carrying a thick manila envelope with him which he placed gently on the table in front of her.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Something I told myself I’d never show you when I realized it wasn’t going anywhere,” he said as he sat back down, “but I think you need to see it now. Go ahead, open it.”

Sunset opened up the crinkled envelope and spread the contents out in front of her, going through papers and files with typed and handwritten notes, interspersed with the occasional photo of her at school or around town. “This is … newspaper clippings, missing children posters, genealogical records?” When she finally realized what she was looking at, she looked back up at Al. “You were trying to find my family all those years ago?”

He nodded in confirmation.

“Oh, Al,” she said, a mixture of sadness and gratitude in her voice, “you know there was no way you could have ever found anything, right?”

He nodded again with a half-serious frown. “I know that now, yes, after you finally trusted me with your secret. Just wish I’d known back then before I hired the third private investigator.”

“But why?”

He shrugged. “You did turn out great in the end, kiddo. You really did. But it wasn’t until you met those friends of yours that things turned around. They helped you become this amazing young woman I see before me today. I always thought that, maybe, having your parents, or any living relative really, would have made things so much easier for you. I saw you struggle through so much. Family is important, and all you had was me and these knuckleheads here at the bar. I just … never felt like I was good enough to be the parent you really needed. But there was a time in your life when I knew that I was the only adult you even slightly trusted. So I had to try. I know I fell short, but I tried my best.”

-“Have you tried?”

Sunset recalled three simple words she’d recently spoken to a certain someone, coming straight from the heart, and in this moment, here and now, she knew exactly why she’d phrased it like that as a tear rolled down her cheek.

Big Al seemed perturbed at the sight. “Sunshine, I didn’t mean to … I’m so sorry …”

“No,” she said with a smile. “You have nothing to be sorry for. But you are wrong. You remember the night of my last Fall Formal?”

He nodded slowly.

Sunset pointed towards the door. “I was a fucking mess when I came home that night. I’d been crying on the whole way over, and before I walked through those doors, I swore to myself that I wouldn’t let anything show through about how I felt. Because that’s what I always did back then, hide and run from my own feelings.

“But you took one look at me, and you knew anyway. And it’s not just that you knew, it’s what you did about it. You took one look at me, and then you closed up the bar, shooed out all the customers while I was trying not to go to pieces until they’d left, and then you sat with me the entire night while I cried myself out on your chest. I ruined your favorite vest, too.”

“It wasn’t my favorite vest,” he mumbled.

“Bullshit!” Sunset laughed through the tears welling up in her eyes. “That was your favorite vest in the whole world, and I ruined it with my snot and tears. You never said anything about it, cause we never even spoke about that night until today, but it was so important to me. Going back to CHS the next day to face the music … it was the hardest fucking thing I ever did in my life, and that’s saying something coming from me. And it kept being hard for a long time. All I’d ever done before was run, and I was going to run then, too.

“But I didn’t, because of you. You were there for me, like a rock. You’re right, it was my friends who helped me turn my life around. But you’re also wrong, because they couldn’t have done what they did, pull me out of the hole I’d dug for myself, if you hadn’t been at the bottom to catch me with those freakishly large, hairy arms of yours.”

Welling up with his own tears, Big Al stood up and Sunset immediately rose to meet him in a tearful hug, much more gentle than the one they’d shared earlier. “I’m so proud of you, Sunshine,” he whispered while stroking her hair. “I know whatever is going on with that student of yours, you’ll figure it out, and he’s lucky to have you in his corner.”

“Thanks, … dad.”

There was a long, awkward silence after that until Big Al went: “Hm, I don’t know about that.”

“Nope, felt weird the moment it came out,” Sunset replied immediately, “We’ll stick with Al.”

They both shared a hearty laugh, and Al rubbed Sunset’s shoulder when they broke the hug. “Come on, I need to show you something else. Much better than the envelope, I promise.” He turned to the bar. “Snake, can you lock up tonight? I’m going out.”

“Sure thing, boss. But I’m putting this down as overtime.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Big Al waved him off and led Sunset out the back where he unlocked and opened a corrugated steel garage door with a giddy grin. Stepping inside, he pulled the sheet off the vehicle standing in the middle.

“Whoa, cool! You finished restoring the EMW?” She immediately went up to the motorcycle to inspect it from every angle, running her fingers gently over the red and white logo. She even tried to look for the rust spots she knew had been there before. None could be seen. “She’s beautiful, Al. You really did a great job on her.”

“She sounds even better than she looks,” he replied proudly.

Sunset’s head whipped around in shock. “You actually got her running? They haven’t made parts for these in over fifty years!”

He tapped the side of his nose and winked at her. “I might be getting up there in years, but I still have some tricks up my sleeve.” Taking some keys from his pocket and jangling them, he added: “What do you say? Shall we take her for a spin?”

Sunset grimaced and looked over at the sidecar attached to the bike. “Don’t you think I’m a little old for the sidecar?”

“Who said anything about the sidecar?” He simply tossed her the keys, put on a half-helmet with some attached goggles and crammed himself into the sidecar. The metal creaked and groaned in protest to accommodate his massive bulk, and the whole contraption became decidedly lopsided, making it an even goofier sight than a large man with biker goggles sitting in a sidecar to begin with. “What? You too respectable these days to take a joyride with your old man?”

Sparky scampered past her, jumped into Big Al’s lap and gave a short bark before looking expectantly at her while panting and wagging his tail.

“Sounds like I’m outvoted,” Sunset acknowledged without too much chagrin and picked up her own helmet from a wall. She controlled herself enough to walk over slowly instead of skipping over like a kid on Christmas morning and swung her leg over the machine. The old-timer rumbled to life between her legs and she goosed the throttle a couple of times, shudders traveling up her body with every roar of the engine. “Oh, yeah. Baby,” she said almost sensually while sporting a grin that went from ear to ear. “You don’t get this feeling from turning the ignition on a Ford Fiesta.”

Big Al turned and looked at her quizzically. “Hey, whatever happened to your old bike anyway!?” He had to shout the question over the revving engine.

Sunset turned and answered him with a perfectly straight face: “Got eaten by a magically animated ATM Machine a few years back!”

“Huh.” Big Al, to his credit, also kept a perfectly straight face as he answered: “Maybe we go around the financial district as we head towards the highway, yeah!?”

Sunset revved the engine once more, released the clutch, and the trio rode off into the night.

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“… police has as of yet been unable to ascertain how the unknown individual was able to gain access to the Canterlot University science laboratory building without being caught on security cameras or tripping the alarm. Thankfully, nobody seems to have been hurt during the break-in late last night. According to Captain Shining Armor of the 5^th Precinct, no hazardous substances that could pose a threat to public safety have been stolen. Asked what the ultimate goal of the robber might have been, the captain declined to speculate, citing the ongoing investigation. We will update you on this story as more information becomes available. For Canterlot News Radio, this is Wallflower Blush.”

Sunset turned off her car radio and pulled out her phone to shoot off a quick text message. “Hey, Sparky. Heard about the break-in at CU. U okay?” Grabbing her shoulder bag, she got out of her car and walked up to the house she’d just arrived at, marveling at the colonial-style mansion.

As she stepped closer, the front door opened and two of her students stepped out to greet her. “Hi, Ms. Sunset!” Pipp said brightly.

“Hey,” Sunset replied, “I wasn’t sure I had the right address. This feels like it should have its own zip code.” She turned to look back at the gravel path she’d driven up on and realized that she couldn’t even see the iron fence that denoted the property entrance from here.

“It’s a major hassle sometimes, living out here in Zephyr Heights,” Zipp said, “but it’s nice when you want to go out jogging without being bothered.”

Sunset nodded. “I bet. You look … different. It’s a good look on you.” Pipp was wearing a less colorful dress than she usually did in school, but Zipp proved to be the more surprising sight, considering she didn’t usually wear dresses at all, much less all the frill that went with this one.

Zipp answered with a dead-pan stare. “Our mother made us wear these for your visit. If you tell anyone at school that you saw me wearing this, I will deny it.”

The trio entered the wide entrance hallway, and Sunset couldn’t help but keep her head on a swivel, considering all the decorations and plush carpeting on display. Her eyes lingered on a set of large oil portraits, all looking very similar in style and features.

Noticing the look, Pipp said: “Pretty amazing, right? Hey, this should interest you as a history teacher. Allow me to give you the overview.” She positioned herself next to the first portrait and held out her arm like a tour guide.

Zipp groaned and rolled her eyes. “Must you, sis?”

Pipp frowned back. “Mom made me memorize these lines, you’re the one who researched the family tree. When else am I gonna get to show this off to someone who might actually be interested? Besides, Mom’s still on the phone. We got a couple minutes.” She cleared her throat and began while Sunset listened politely to the family history lesson. “This is our great-great-grandmother who was the founder and editor of the Canterlot Herald, the first town newspaper when Canterlot City was barely a railway stopover back in the 1890s.

“Next up we have our great-grandmother who established the first commercial radio station in the state in 1923, followed by our grandmother who added Canterlot’s first local TV station to the family business in the 50s. And finally, of course, here’s a picture of our mother who took over as CEO of Haven Media twenty years ago and launched us into the digital age with our own streaming service, thus earning her the title ‘Queen of Canterlot Media.’”

Sunset nodded and spoke after Pipp had apparently finished. “They all look very … imposing.”

Zipp suppressed a chuckle. “Told you.”

While wobbling her head back and forth, Pipp replied: “The artist who painted these was very insistent that he wanted to convey the gravitas of a line of successful businesswomen.”

“Our great-great-grandmother looked nothing like this stoic Victorian image,” Zipp explained. “I actually found an old photograph of her covered in mud and wrestling a bull to the ground with her bare hands at the state fair. I was lobbying really hard to have that digitally restored and hung on the wall instead.”

Sunset couldn’t help but chuckle. “That makes much more sense when I look at the two of you.”

Pipp shrugged her shoulders and began walking again. “Come on, our mom should be ready by now.” She led the way into a lushly decorated sitting room with a coffee table and comfy sofas and chairs. On the other side of the room was a door, slightly ajar, that seemed to lead to a much more modern-looking home office. “Mom? Our teacher is here!”

The door opened a little more and a middle-aged woman with purple-gray hair and a matching business blazer stepped halfway out while holding up a finger and a cordless phone in the other hand. “Can you get me anything else for the 6 o’clock? … Of course it helps if he’s cute, but we can’t run a segment on just the police captain stonewalling press questions. We’re a news station, not a model agency. … Alright, just pull some archival footage of the lab and the university for a voice-over. Also, see if you can’t get some retired professor to agree to an interview on short notice. Those old academics love to appear on TV as experts. I gotta go.

“I’m so sorry, Miss Shimmer,” she said, hanging up the phone and shaking Sunset’s hand with a pleasant smile. “Of course, the one day I take off from work, the biggest local crime story of the year breaks. Please,” she added, gesturing towards the comfortable sofa, and they all sat down.

“It’s not a problem, Mrs. Haven. I know you’re a busy woman.”

“Please.” She waved that off. “Mrs. Haven is my mother. Just call me Haven, dear.”

“Alright then.” Sunset reached into her bag and brought out several papers. “First things first, I’m supposed to give these to you. They’re mostly information leaflets about the Camp Everfree trip at the end of this school year and the list of books and materials for the coming school year for you to look over, since you missed the last few PTA meetings.”

“Yes, I’m terribly sorry that you had to come down here and do this in person,” Haven replied as she began glancing through the stack. “It’s so hard to find the time. Oh, what’s this? A play? And you’re both in it? Why is this the first time I’m hearing about it?” She picked out the poster for Der Shimmelreiter and held it up.

“Well,” Zipp began, “we didn’t know if you would be able to make it, so we wanted to make sure the date was final before telling you.”

“Nonsense! I will move heaven and earth if I have to to come and watch the premiere.”

Sunset couldn’t help but notice the look that passed between the sisters, as if they’d heard that one before and nothing had come of it.

Showing that she at least wasn’t totally oblivious to her daughters’ school lives, she looked at Sunset and said: “I understand we have you to thank for the fact that CHS still has a drama club to begin with.”

“Oh, well. Maybe a little. There were some issues at the beginning of the year, since the regular advisor is absent, but we worked it out.” Remembering the monetary issues and Celestia’s remarks, Sunset couldn’t help but wonder as she sat here in this literal mansion. “If I may ask, why aren’t Zipp and Pipp attending Crystal Prep? From the outside, it certainly looks like you could afford it.”

Far from being offended, Haven leaned back with a smile. “Tell me, Miss Shimmer, did you go to a public school?”

Sunset nodded. “Yes, I’m a CHS graduate as a matter of fact.”

“As am I,” Haven answered. “Our family has reported the news in this community for generations now. And yes, we’ve done well for ourselves in doing so. But it doesn’t do to lose touch with the common folk in this business. Oh, I’ll splurge money on my girls when they’re at home or we’re taking a spa trip, but I want them to grow up in the real world, not some gated community, so they’ll be ready for it when they graduate.”

Sunset couldn’t argue with that logic, though a voice in the back of her head that sounded remarkably like Celestia put in: A bit of that money certainly wouldn’t go amiss in keeping the lights on in the classroom, though.

“Alright, is there anything else I should be aware of, Miss Shimmer? I hope my girls are doing well.”

Sunset nodded carefully. “They’re both doing fine, but there’s always room for improvement. Pipp can be a little … distracted at times, for obvious reasons.”

Haven gave her a look that said what she was getting at was anything but obvious, until Sunset indicated with her head and Haven looked at her daughter who was in turn looking at the phone screen. Only after the silence became noticeable, did Pipp look up with a questioning glance. “Huh?”

“Personally,” Sunset began diplomatically, “I’ve found it helpful to have something like a digital cleanse every once in a while. Just select a day of the month and turn off all electronic devices to reconnect with the real world.”

“I can stop whenever I want,” Pipp said petulantly and put her phone on the coffee table. When it made a notification sound, she mounted the will to keep still on her seat for a whole two seconds before she reached for it. “I haven’t technically started yet.”

Haven had a slight frown on her face. “Noted, Miss Shimmer. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. What about Zipp? I’ve noticed her grades are vastly better in the classes you teach in comparison to the others.”

Sunset scratched her head. “I’m not sure I can take all the credit. Ms. Cheerilee is very complimentary of Zipp’s skills in English, especially when it comes to writing essays. But she could put a little more effort into the sciences.”

Getting a look from her mother, Zipp simply shrugged. “Sciences are boring. You’ll always come to the same conclusion if you use the right formula. All that changes is the numbers on the questions. It’s much more fun to arrive at a unique answer through figuring things out.”

“I feel like Zipp needs to be challenged,” Sunset pointed out. “That’s what makes her so good as a member of the track and field team. She’s way smarter than she lets on, but it takes a little incentive. Speaking of,” she continued while turning to her student, “is there anything you’re really striving for right now?”

Zipp sat up a little straighter. “That’s a heavy question out of the blue, Miss S.” She glanced over at her mother who was watching expectantly to hear the answer. “There is one thing. I think I wanna be a reporter.”

Haven smiled. “Oh, that’s wonderful, Zipp! Why haven’t you said anything before? You should come to the office with me next time I …”

“No, Mom,” Zipp interrupted, holding out her hand as a look of hurt crossed her mother’s face. “This is exactly why I never brought this up.” Sunset hadn’t expected her question to get that kind of reaction, but she had obviously struck a nerve and was curious where Zipp was going with this. “I don’t … wanna work with you at Haven Media.”

Haven looked simply crestfallen after a genuine happiness had risen in her just a minute ago. “But why, Zephyrina? This is your legacy. The door’s wide open for you. Nothing would make me more happy.”

“Because,” Zipp began, slowly gathering her thoughts, “you’re my mom. Everyone there knows who I am, and I don’t want to sit in a newsroom at the top floor of a downtown high-rise, writing fluff pieces for the website. I’m talking real, investigative journalism. … I learned something about myself this year. I realized that I like wrapping my head around a mystery, and I’m really good at it. I even considered joining the school newspaper, but I really wanna learn at the Herald.”

“The Canterlot Herald?” Haven asked with a raised eyebrow. “You do realize that the Herald is still part of Haven Media, right?”

“Yeah, but you barely show your face around there. The only person there who really knows you is Final Approval, the editor-in-chief, and they have their own independent newsroom. I wanna be out on the street, covering news from the ground floor, and not just be handed something cause my mom is the queen of all media. You said it yourself: Can’t lose touch with the common folk if you want to be taken seriously as a reporter.”

Haven let that sink in, looking back at Sunset for a moment who simply gave an encouraging smile. Then something seemed to click in her head as she sighed to herself. “You and your sister are growing up so fast. Every time I blink, I feel like I’ve missed something.” She turned back to Zipp with a smile. “Alright,” she began while shifting from mother straight to businesswoman. “Here’s the deal: If you bring up your grade point average by, let’s say, half a point by the end of the school year, I’ll talk to Final Approval about getting you an internship at the Herald next summer. And I’ll make sure he won’t give you any special treatment on account of me.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Alright,” Zipp replied with a grin. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Of course.” Haven turned back to Sunset and began to smirk. “What did I tell you? I doubt Crystal Prep would have been conducive to this kind of revelation, wouldn’t you agree? Wondercolts Forever.”

“Wondercolts Forever,” Sunset replied.

“Was there anything else you had to discuss?”

Sunset shook her head and stood up. “No, I think that about covers it.”

“Very well. Thank you for your time, Miss Shimmer. Zipp, why don’t you show your teacher out? In the meantime,” Haven said, taking the cellphone out of a startled Pipp’s hands who hadn’t paid any attention to the latter half of the conversation, “you and I are going to have a discussion about your social media habits.”

Zipp and Sunset picked up on the cue and beat a hasty retreat. As they made their way to the front door in a comfortable silence, Sunset stopped at the three large pictures of previous family matrons and put a hand over her bag as something occurred to her. “Hey, Zipp. Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Your sister said that you did genealogical research of your family tree earlier?”

“Yeah, it was actually a pretty fun project. Why do you ask?”

Sunset pursed her lips. “Hypothetically, if I was trying to find any living relative of a certain person, how would I go about it?”

Zipp gave her an odd look. “Aren’t you a history teacher?”

“That’s exactly my problem,” Sunset admitted. “I’m used to finding stuff out about long dead people, not living ones.”

“That’s fair, I guess,” Zipp mused. “I suppose you’d have to set some time aside, get familiar with the resources that are available online, maybe even visit some archives, depending on how deep you wanted to dig.”

“What if I needed to know the answer by the end of this week?”

“Then I suppose you’d have to find someone who already has all the resources and knows how to use ‘em. Someone like me.” When Sunset didn’t respond right away, Zipp crossed her arms, cocked her head and added: “This isn’t a hypothetical question, is it?”

“Could you do it?”

Zipp considered the question for a moment and then nodded. “I could give it a shot. Archival research is probably out. But since you’re asking about living relatives, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll have an online footprint somewhere. Come with me.”

Sunset followed her student through several hallways until they arrived at what seemed to be Zipp’s room. It looked nothing like what one would expect a teenage girl’s room to look like. One side of the room was taken up with sports posters and exercise equipment, while the other contained a truly epic PC set-up with several monitors that Sunset would have salivated over during her short-lived hobby as a games streamer.

“Cloudpuff, wake up,” Zipp said with a clap of her hands as she sat down in her comfy gaming chair. Fans whirred, CPUs sprang to life and the monitors lit up obediently at her command while the sound effect of a small dog barking played.

“I am feeling so old right now,” Sunset muttered to herself as she watched the spectacle.

Zipp’s fingers flew across the keyboard as she pulled up several files and websites all at once. “I still have accounts with all the genealogy sites I used. Social media also helps. It’s crazy what people post about their lives these days. So, whose family are we looking for? Also, I hope you have more than just a name to go on.”

“I’ve got a copy of a birth certificate and some old research notes on a family business.”

“That’s a good starting point.”

Sunset opened her bag and reached for some papers before hesitating. “I’m not supposed to show this to you, so you can’t tell anyone about this.”

“Please, Ms. Sunset, keeping their sources confidential is the lifeblood of a good reporter,” Zipp replied and held out her hand.

Sighing, Sunset handed over the stack of papers.

Zipp’s eyebrows rose after scanning the first page and landing on a name. “I can see how that might land you in hot water in several ways if it got out you asked me to look into this.” She pursed her lips and thought for a minute before looking at her teacher again. “This is connected to what you talked to Sunny about the other day, isn’t it?”

“She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about that,” Sunset replied with a frown.

“She didn’t, only that you were trying to help. Tell me something, Ms. Sunset, have you ever been diagnosed with something called a savior complex?”

“If you’re feeling uncomfortable with this, say it now, and I’ll find another way. But I’ve only got two days left.”

Zipp drummed her fingers on the desktop for a bit before shaking her head. “Nah, I’ll help you out. Feels like I owe you for back in there. It’s tough to have a serious chat with my mom. Knowing there was someone there who gets me like you do helped. Besides, you know me,” she said as a broad grin made its way onto her face, “I like a challenge. Cloudpuff, connect the VPN and set my online activity to Detective Mode. Set IP to randomize every ten minutes.”

As Zipp cracked her knuckles and the smart lights dimmed in response to her voice command, Sunset couldn’t help but stand there and think: And you think I have a savior complex, Batmare?

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