> Chair-bound
>  by sykko
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Prologue: The Fall Formal aftermath and two weeks after
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Friday: the Fall Formal aftermath


Sunset Shimmer, her clothes still tattered and stained from her turning into the corrupted demon form when she put on the Element of Magic and then purified with a blast from the coiling rainbow of the Elements themselves, was smearing mortar with a trowel on the bricks she had just placed, along with her two, now former toadies, Snips and Snails, while Vice-principal  Luna leaned against a wall in the entryway watching. More than once Luna had to scold the two chuckle heads when they flicked pebbles or flung gobs of mortar at each other when they though the vice-principal wasn't looking.

Tears occasionally leaked down the teenage girl's face, pooled on the tip of her nose and dripped into the grey mortar.

While Princess Twilight Sparkle did her odd spastic dance that other students had joined in on, Short Fuse sat in the bleachers, his mind a mix of anger and fear. Off to one end of the dance floor, by the refreshments table, a green-skinned girl sat against the wall, hugging her knees. Her mind a mix of social anxiety, jealously, and self-loathing.

After a few hours, the dance came to an end. The students filtered out of the gym doors and into the parking lot. Princess Twilight and her five new friends shared a group hug. "Now remember, I want you all to watch out for Sunset, help her be a better pony...er...human. Teach her about friendship."

"Don't worry yer head none, princess. We'll keep two eyes on her an' keep her on the straight-n-narrah.", the farm girl replied.

"But of course darling.", the fashionista said in her typical overly-posh accent, "I wouldn't think of letting her backslide."

"Mm-hmm.", was all the animal lover could mumble out.

"What Fluttershy is trying to say is that we'll all watch out for her.", the rainbow-haired athlete spoke up, "With someone as awesome as me, she'll be twenty percent cooler and friendlier by association."

"We won't let Sunset go back to her meanie-wienie ways!", the bubbly, hyperactive party girl proclaimed, "We'll teach her all about friendship and parties!"

The purple pony princess shared one last group hug with her new friends before stepping back through the plinth of the statue that held the portal and into the world she had come from.

The students filtered through the parking lot, many gathered into their cars or their waiting parents.

Short Fuse stood off to the side, staring daggers at the fire-haired girl who was stacking bricks and smearing them with mortar. He clenched his fist to the point where his nails dug into his palms. "I'm going to fucking kill you, bitch.", he growled under his breath. As he took a step forward, a turquoise hand came to rest on his shoulder. Quickly turning, he locked eyes on the only two people that he considered friends, Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder.

"Let the queen of the retards play in the mud. Besides, we'll kick her ass on Monday.", Lightning Dust said with a smirk, "C'mon, Rolling Thunder's got her dad's 'vette. We're gonna tear ass all over town, and we might even get some mook to do a beer run for us."

The trio turned and left for the parking lot. As they walked off, Rolling Thunder bumped into Wallflower Blush, knocking the girl back a few steps. "Watch where you're goin', plant-humper.", Rolling Thunder said, leaning into the green-haired girl's face, causing her to backpedal even more. Rolling Thunder pulled back a fist, causing the socially anxious girl to flinch. The three snickered and Rolling Thunder shoved Wallflower, making the girl stagger backwards, trip over her own feet and fall unceremoniously on her butt.

"Hey!", Rainbow Dash shouted running up, "Leave her alone."

"Or what, Rainbow Crash? You gonna do somethin'?", Lightning Dust said, getting in the rainbow-haired athlete's face, "Coach ain't here to keep you from gettin' your ass kicked."

Rainbow growled and drew back a fist. Applejack grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her away. "They ain't worth it.", the farm girl said.

"Looks like someone saved your ass again, Rain-ho.", Rolling Thunder said with a sneer.

"Let's go.", Lightning Dust said, "Let's leave these two rug munchers to diddle each other."

"Why you!", Rainbow snarled, rushing forward, only to have Applejack hold her back.

"They're jus' tryin' tah get under yer skin, RD. They ain't worth it."

"Yeah, Rain-ho dyke. Listen to your inbred friend, you don't want none of this.", Short Fuse said, slapping fives with his two friends.

"Dear sweet Baby Jesus, please give me the strength tah not wring their necks.", Applejack whispered to herself. "Look, why dun y'all three jus' git on out of here? Ain't nobody lookin' fer a fight."

Lightning Dust sneered at the farm girl. "That's right, go home and whine to your mommy and daddy...oh wait, you c--OOF!" An orange fist slammed into her jaw, sending her sprawling to the ground.

Applejack, her knuckles burning from where she hit the turquoise-skinned girl, glared at Short Fuse and Rolling Thunder, her face a mask of rage.

"All right, break it up!", Luna shouted as she walked up. "Miss Dust, you're already one screw-up from being put in the washouts program, unless you want to wear those sweats for the next twelve weeks, I suggest you and your friends run on home." She turned to Applejack. "And you Miss Apple, unless you want to be put in the program too, I suggest you go home as well." She turned to where Wallflower had been shoved to the ground. "Wallflower, are you..." The only sign that the green-skinned girl had been there was a small divot in the dirt where she had landed and footprints in the dust where she had run off.

Once the incident was over and all involved had all departed, Luna walked back to the entrance of the school where the two boys and the fire-haired girl were. It was clear that Snips and Snails had been goofing off, flinging mortar at each other. Sunset, still on her hands and knees, continued to place bricks and spread mortar over them with the trowel. "All right, that's enough for the night. You three go wait inside while I call your parents."

Twenty minutes later, the two boys' parents were standing outside the entrance. Snips' father, a hulking mass of a man, whom the boy was the spiriting image of, stood there glaring at his son, his muscular arms crossed across his chest. He pointed a meaty finger to the car, Snips lowered his head and silently complied. Snails' mom, a skinny half-pint of a woman, gave such a fierce glare at her son that it would have made Medusa flinch. She gestured for Snails to bend over, when he complied, she grabbed his ear lobe between two fingers and drug him to the car.

Luna walked up to Sunset. "Sunset, if I call the number you left on file, I'm not gonna get your parents, am I?"

The amber-skinned girl stared to the corner opposite her. "No."

"Get your things, I'll take you home."

"It's alright. I can take the late bus."

Luna looked down at Sunset with her trademark, world famous nonplussed stare. "I can't in good faith let you take the bus home. Who knows what kind of creeps are out there looking to take advantage of a fifteen-year old girl."

"No!", Sunset snapped before recoiling. "There won't be anybody on the bus and where I'm going, it'll be pretty dead, no creepers. They'll all be uptown skeeving on all the guys and girls who were at the formal.", she said in a quieter tone.

Luna was familiar with how the twenty and thirty-something creepers would try to get into a high schoolers pants by offering to get them beer or weed. Because of creeps, she and Celestia had kept a good rapport with the Canterlot City police. The gears in her brain turned as she hit an 'ah-ha' moment. "If you insist on taking the late bus, then I'm walking you to the stop, and I'm not taking no for an answer."

Sunset nodded meekly.

Luna stood at the bus stop as Sunset had boarded the vehicle. She waited for a few moments as the bus pulled off, memorizing the bus' number on the back. Pulling out her cell phone from her jacket pocket, she scrolled through the contacts, stopping on Police Sergeant Shining Armor's number and hit the call button. "Hey Shiny! I hope you're treating my niece well. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Ah. This isn't a social call. I need you to do a check on a student. Her name's Sunset Shimmer. She just got on the bus going downtown. The bus number's seventeen-zero-three-dash-twelve-one. I'll text you her picture. Just make sure she's okay and not in a bad place. Uh-huh. Ah-huh. You better make sure I get the invite to the wedding. I see. Well if you can't find someone to officiate the wedding, Celly's an ordained minister. No problem. Bye!" She pressed the red icon on the screen, ending the call and put the phone back in her pocket. Walking back to her office, she stopped by Celestia's office door. Opening it, she peeked in and saw her sister sitting at her desk going over paperwork. "Hey Celly? You got a copy of the most recent yearbook? I want to send a recent picture of Sunset Shimmer to Shining Armor, just to make sure she's not in a bad place."

Celestia looked up from the paperwork and pushed her reading glasses down her nose so she could look over them. "You got a weird gut feeling too?"

"Yeah.", Luna replied, "Plus now that it looks like Sunset Shimmer has been knocked off as queen capital B, I've already seen a disturbing trend for the next possible bully posse."

The elder sister frowned. "Lemme guess, Lightning Dust, Short Fuse and Rolling Thunder?"

Luna nodded in response.

Celestia sighed as she wheeled her office chair over to the file cabinet. "It's uncanny how we can spot those who are bound for jail when they first step foot in the school. It's gotten easier to spot the troubled kids when the school board merged merged the middle school with the high school to save money, but it's made for more paperwork as we now have to look out for double the kids." She opened the bottom drawer and rifled through the yearbooks. "Ah, here we go.", she said, pulling out the most recent yearbook. She wheeled her office chair back over to her desk and laid it down in front of her sister.

Luna opened up the yearbook and flipped through the pages until she came to Sunset's picture that had the "honorific" biggest meanie. Pulling out her phone, she opened up the camera, snapped the photo and texted it to Shining Armor. Closing the book, she said, "Thanks sis."

The elder sister gave a non-committal grunt in the affirmative as she grumbled to herself about what programs to cut funding to so the school could afford to have the front of the school repaired in time for the music festival in four months.

Luna stepped into her office, walked over to the mini-fridge, opened the door and pulled out a bottle of ginger ale. Taking a disposable cup from the cupboard, she poured poured the clear, light-yellow soda in. It was on nights like this that she wished she had not quit drinking as she watched the bubbles in the carbonated drink form a white, fizzy head. Her mind went back to that night twenty years ago when she had gotten drunk and passed out behind the wheel, the the injuries from the resulting crash caused her to loose her left leg below the knee and a rod from the engine had impaled her through the stomach, thankfully missing her intestines but tearing through her uterus, causing her to lose it, along with the baby she didn't know she was pregnant with. Her face had gotten smashed up pretty bad, requiring several surgeries to repair the damage, though over the years she had gotten pretty good at hiding the scars with makeup. That wasn't the worst of it, the car she had hit had a young family, which hadn't survived the wreck. That hurt the most of all. The state had decided to take pity on her at the trial and determined that because of her state of mind considering that her and Celestia's parents had died six months prior in a similar crash, instead of her being stupid and driving drunk, instead she had attempted suicide and she wound up being committed to a psychological hospital for one thousand days.

Between the therapists, the medications, and the general atmosphere of the hospital, Luna was grateful that had ended her edgy Nightmare Moon phase, or else she would have ended up in a prison upstate, turning big rocks into smaller rocks. Her phone beeped and she pulled it out to check it. Shining Armor had texted to let her know he received the message and would follow the bus to make sure Sunset was okay. She texted back her thank and tossed the phone onto the desk. Sitting down in the office chair, she rolled up the left leg of her pants and pulled off the prosthetic leg that made up her lower leg and foot. As she scratched the stump, she swore that sometimes she could still feel the leg that hadn't been there since she was sixteen. Taking a few swallows of soda, she scratched her belly, allowing her fingers to linger on the scars on her lower abdomen. It was physical reminders like this of why she gave up alcohol twenty years ago.


***


Short Fuse stepped out of Rolling Thunder's car. His house was dark and quiet, which meant his dad was either out drinking or passed out drunk. Either way he figured that he'd have a pretty good chance of sneaking back to his room and hopefully in the morning his dad would be in a good mood. He moved the potted plant on the window sill by the front door and retrieved the key hidden underneath. After unlocking the door and putting the key back, he slowly and as quietly as possible opened the door. He stopped just inside the door, listening as his eyes darted around the room. Then he heard a noise he feared, the clink of a glass bottle. He silently cursed and started to back out the door.

"'s that you boy?"

Short Fuse instinctively froze. His dad was drunk and probably in a bad mood, like he usually was when he drank.

"Y' gonna answer me boy?"

"Y-y-yes, sir. It's me."

"You're late, boy."

"I-I-I'm sorry. Tonight was the Fall Formal and me and some friends went out after to have some fun."

"Well don't stand at the door like some sorta creep. C'm'n in."

Short Fuse didn't want to, but his feet moved on their own accord as if they were on autopilot. Entering the kitchen, though the lights were out, he saw the figure of his father slumped over the table. The headlights of a passing car momentarily illuminated the kitchen and he briefly saw a pink slip of paper on the table. Shit! This is bad!

"I hope you got yer fingers stinky, boy."

"Uh, n-no sir. Me and Lightning and Rolling aren't like that.", Short Fuse replied as every part of his brain was screaming for him to run.

The drunk man looked up from the table and straight at the boy. "You some kinda Nancy-boy?"

"Uh, n-no sir."

The drunk man spoke gibberish, mocking his son's reply. "You talk just like a faggot. I bet you're wearing girl's panties too."

"Go fuck yourself, you drunk bastard! Maybe if you laid off the bottle once in a while, you wouldn't have gotten fired."

The man was on his feet and in Short Fuse's face in a blur. "You think you're better than me? You think you can take me? Well go ahead, take your shot."

Short Fuse balled up his fist as his body shook in a mix of anger and fear. "Y-y-you know what? Why don't you just dri--AH!" A fist slammed into the side of his face, sending him crumpling to the floor. He looked up at the shadowy form of his father towering over him in the dark.

"You even scream like a little faggot." The drunken man began fiddling with his belt buckle. "I shoulda beat the sissy outa you a long time ago." The belt came out of the belt loops with a series of cracking snaps.

Short Fuse lay on the floor frozen in fear as the belt rained down on him in blow after blow.


***


Shining Armor tailed the bus as it wove through neighborhoods that grew more and more rundown. He unhooked the small loop that secured the pistol in its holster. He knew how the gangs could be in these neighborhood, and though he didn't want to have to use the pistol, he'd rather be prepared.

Shining Armor watched as the bus stopped at a stop near a soup kitchen. He watched as the fire-haired girl got off, walked across the street, avoiding the groups of sketchy-looking people and to the front of the building. He watched as she talked with the guard at the door, though he couldn't hear and it was too far to read their lips, her body language inferred everything. The soup kitchen was closed for the night. He watched as Sunset hung her head and walked off. He tailed her to see where she was staying.

Sunset walked for several blocks, the houses looked rundown. This neighborhood used to be a nice place ten years ago, not upscale, mostly people working in middle-class jobs that had carved out their slice of the pie, then the banks had started given out bad-faith loans to people who they knew couldn't repay. Almost like clockwork, the people couldn't repay their loans and defaulted, resulting in their homes getting repossessed. The bankers had thought they could make money hand-over-fist by reselling the recently repossessed houses, but ten years of sagging roofs, broken windows, peeling paint and partially collapsed porches spoke of what happens when banks give out bad-faith loans.

Shining Armor continued to follow the fire-haired girl as she walked past the vacant houses. Some of them were charred, burnt-out husks where some homeless people had squatted in to get out of the weather and started a fire in long-disused fireplaces or a steel trashcan to get warm, or where a drug lab had a catastrophic accident. He shook his head at it all. Though his parents had a charity that helped people who needed food, clothes or a place to live, and the local Ste. Somnambula's church did all they could, there was only so much they could do as they had limited funds, space and/or supplies, so there were always people who fell through the cracks, more than anyone liked to admit or even think about. The mayor had tried to get some government-funded programs to help with the homeless problem, but her hands were tied as the old money bastards on the city council blocked every proposal or even throttled the money for these programs.

Sunset slipped into an alleyway between two neighborhoods. Shining Armor kept his distance in his cruiser, diving down the street that the alley ran parallel to, keeping track of the girl. She disappeared behind one house. Putting the car in park, he made sure his gun belt was in place and everything was secure on it before switching off the car and getting out.

Shining looked around, looking for the telltale signs of a drug lab and gang graffiti. He blew out a sigh, so far it looked like the Griffons, the Diamond Dogs, the Abbysinians or any other of the major gangs in Caterlot City hadn't made this their territory...yet, one less thing he'd have to deal with tonight. He walked between the houses and to the back of the one that Sunset had most likely gone into. He could see where she had worn a path through the dust and grass to a porch that looked like had repaired the broken or sagging boards, probably with lumber harvested from other houses or from within the house. The back door appeared to be nailed shut from the inside, but the pet door had a large plank of plywood covering it. Scrapes along the door showed that the plywood had been moved many times in the past and most likely earlier.

Shining quickly inspected the porch and door for any booby traps, when homeless people have been squatting somewhere for a while, because like anyone else, they want for security, they just lack the access to things like security systems. The traps usually aren't lethal, generally something to alert whoever is inside, like a box or milk crate filled with glass bottles that would fall and shatter when a door is opened or a certain board is stepped on, though traps that can injure or even kill weren't unheard of, like nail boards hidden under a pile of trash or filthy clothes, floorboards that have been intentionally weakened or rotten board strategically placed so when someone steps on them, their foot and leg fall through the hole, or even a trip wire that connected to a heavy object that falls or swings down on a rope.

Finding no signs of traps, Shining Armor gave a closer inspection of the back door. Though the lock was busted, probably from a police raid or a break-in, it wouldn't budge, being nailed tightly shut. He inspected the pet door, the slat of wood in it had been moved and replaced, probably how she got in. The pet door was too small for him to get in and he began to inspect the windows on the back porch. Though the glass had been broken a long time ago, the windows were boarded up and the boards looked relatively newer, there were even old ratty blankets hung up serving as makeshift curtains.

Reaching between the slats, Shining moved the ratty blanket aside to look in. In the gloom of the rundown house he could what was left of the kitchen. The hastily torn-off gas line spoke that someone had stolen the stove some time ago, probably to salvage the recyclable components in it. The fridge laid on its side, the compressor and various guts ripped out long ago. Likewise the kitchen sink was gone and part of the floor had been torn up. His gaze moved around to what else he could see in the house. What furniture that remained was either broken or covered in dust, mold and other detritus. Someone or someones had some time ago had ripped out sections of the sheetrock to get at the valuable copper wiring. The stairs that went up to the second floor looked to be in good shape, a dim silvery light, probably from an electric lantern, shone, casting dim fingers of light and shadow down the stairs. Feeling for the phone in his pocket, he though about how to get in the house.

"You looking for Red?", a voice asked from behind.

Spinning around to face who had come up behind him, Shining simultaneously drew his pistol. Standing just off the porch were a couple of homeless men, dress in filthy clothes. The first one, his eyes went wide as he raised his hands, the second one, clearly intoxicated, eyes went wide as he staggered backwards.

"Whoa! Easy there, Officer.", the first man said, "We don't mean you no harm. We saw you snoopin' 'round here and we was just makin' sure you weren't lookin' to hurt her or snatch he up and the like."

Shining put his pistol back in his holster. "So how do you know her?"

"'Bout three years back, we came 'cross her huddled in an alley, sick from eatin' outa garbage cans. She weren't older than twelve or thirteen and we all took a shine to her and couldn't bear the thought of some slinger gettin' his hooks in her, a pimp snatchin' her to whore her out or some bangers beatin' her into their crew or using her as their bicycle, so's we all pitched in to find her a place she could sleep and even helped make sure she was safe."

"When you say 'we', how many are you talking about?", Shining asked.

"There used to be four of us, all vets. I'm Stan an' this here's Kyle. Kenny got killed when a bus hit him and Eric lost his life to diabetes. So let me ask you a couple of things, did Red get beat up? She looks like she's been put through the wringer. And why are you here looking for her?"

"I don't know if she got beat up. There was some sort of accident at the school and the front got smashed, maybe she got hurt. A good friend who works at the school asked me to check up on her to make sure she was okay. I need to make a quick phone call, can I ask you two to stay near and make sure she doesn't bolt and that she's okay?"

The two men nodded as Shining Armor went around to the front of the house, checked the address and pulled out his phone. Calling Luna, when she picked up, he didn't wait for her to say 'hello' when he began relaying the information.


***


Celestia and Luna pulled up to the place Shining Armor gave them the address over the phone in Celestia's SUV. They pulled up to where Shining was waiting for them. The two principal sisters got out and hurried over to where Shining Armor stood, waving them over.

"So where's Sunset?", Celestia asked.

"She's still in the house, probably asleep.", Shining Armor said, "The vets who've been watching out for her are watching the back."

Luna shoved past Shining Armor and began pounding on the front door."Sunset! Sunset Shimmer!", she shouted, "I know you're in there! Open up so we can take you somewhere safe!"

"Luna!", Celestia scolded, "We don't want to scare her. She could run, right into the hands of someone who would use and abuse her. And we don't want to rush in there, the floor could be rotten in places. We could fall right through and then we'd be hurt."

"I've got an idea.", Shining Armor said, "I'll be right back." He went over to the cruiser, popped the trunk and pulled out a flat prybar. Walking back over, he said,"She's been using the back door, going in and out the pet door that she blocks with what looks like a piece of plywood. The floor in the kitchen and the stairs might be in good enough shape to hold our weight. I'll break open the back door so we can get in that way. One of you stay here just in case she tries to bolt out the front."

Celestia agreed to stay at the front while Luna and Shining Armor went around back. Shining ordered the two homeless vets to watch the sides and shout if Sunset tried to go out one of the windows. Shining Armor stepped up on the back porch, with Luna close behind. "Stand back." He jammed the end of the flat prybar into the crack between the frame and the door and began pulling with all his might. At first nothing happened,then with a loud crack, the door moved slightly as a piece of the frame broke loose. Pushing the prybar in further, he began pulling again.

Sunset, sleeping on the pallet of blankets, with her backpack serving as a pillow, snapped awake with the sound of wood breaking. Oh no! Someone's breaking in! Scrambling out from under the blanket she had thrown over herself, still dressed in her clothes from the day, she grabbed the only object that was hard and heavy enough to defend herself, the old electric guitar she found in a closet when she first started squatting here. Muscles trembling with a mixture of adrenaline and fear, she gripped the neck of the guitar, wielding it as a makeshift club. Creeping down the stairs, the sounds of the wood on the back door cracking filling the house. Images of a crazed murderer or rapist, ran through the head as the door slowly lurched inch-by-inch. The sound of her own pulse in her ears was deafening as she stepped off the bottom stair and began creeping through the house. The back door flew open, she shrieked out a war cry and charged the figure silhouetted in the door frame. If they were going to rape or murder or rape and murder her, she was going to fight them. She swung the guitar with all her might and felt it get deflected by something just before it was ripped from her hands.

With a final crack, the door flew open and Shining saw a figure running at him, screaming and holding something over its head. He held the prybar up deflect the object, then reached up with his free hand to pull it away. He was surprised to see it  was a guitar.

Sunset, now disarmed, leapt at the figure in the doorway, screaming, punching, kicking, scratching and biting, if she was about to be raped and murdered, she was going to make them pay for every second before they finally did the deed.

Shining Armor found himself grappling with a terrified one hundred pound teenage girl. Dropping the objects in his hands, he struggled with the terrified girl, trying to not hurt her not get himself hurt in the process. He yelped in pain as teeth sank into his forearm, then a sharp pain exploded in his groin cause spots to dance before his eyes and he doubled over, falling to the floor.

Sunset's teeth met flesh and the coppery taste of blood met her tongue. Her attacker released his grip and she brought her knee up to his groin. As he fell over, she bolted past him, another form reached out and grabbed her, dragging her down to the wood of the porch. She screamed as she punched and scratched when a weight pressed itself onto her stomach.

Luna heard Shining Armor yelp in pain, then grunt, before doubling over and falling down. Sunset ran out and she grabbed the girl, spinning her down the the porch and sat on her stomach. She wrestled with the screaming girl as she scratched at her face.

The ruckus brought Stan, Kyle and Celestia around to see what was going on.

Stan ran up onto the porch, stomped a foot on the wood and shouted, "Red! You're good!"

The sound of Stan stomping and shouting brought Sunset out out of her fear-fueled berserker rampage. Looking up, she realized that it was Vice-principal Luna who was sitting on her. She looked around and saw Principal Celestia standing nearby with a concerned look on her face.

Once everything had settled down and they had made sure Shining Armor was okay, they ventured into the house Sunset was squatting in to help her gather her stuff.

While Luna helped Sunset gather up her belongings, Celestia and Shining Armor stood in the hallway. Her gaze landed on the few pictures left hanging on the wall, he attention was drawn to one in particular and walked over. In the picture was a woman who could have been Sunset, right down to the light cyan eyes, the amber skin and red and blonde-stripped hair. Standing beside the woman was a man who had a messy mop of pale, arctic blue and pale, almost white, light grey-stripped hair and charcoal grey skin. In front of them stood a little girl with dark grey skin, piercing blue eyes, a head of fiery red hair and to top it off, she sported a big, happy, broad snaggle-toothed grin. Celestia remembered the family and when they moved away. It made her sad thinking about how many young families were forced to uproot all those years ago because of greedy bankers.

After Sunset had her things gathered up and loaded into Celestia's SUV, the woman with the pastel rainbow-colored hair handed to the two vets her business card, the number of a shelter in the neighboring county hastily scribbled down on a napkin and enough cash for them to stay a the night at a motel as she finished up her call with the cab company, because of the neighborhood, they insisted on the full price of the ride upfront before they would send a car out their way. Hanging up the call, she grumbled to herself about how everyone talked about helping the homeless, but when someone proposed building a new homeless shelter, suddenly everyone suddenly said 'Not in my backyard!'. Shining Armor had informed her and Luna that he was required by law to notify both DFCS and CPS when dealing with a homeless kid, but because it was the weekend, it wouldn't be until Monday at the soonest before they would send any case workers.

Stan and Kyle had tears in their eyes, the former blubbering like a baby, while the latter, which the two sisters learned had lost his voice box to throat cancer, silently wept. "Th-thank you, ma'am", Stan said between sobs, "You've done more for us than most people. Usually they just look down on us or pretend they don't see us and whisper under their breath 'Get a job you bums.'"

Celestia held up her hand. "I'm not looking for your thanks. Jesus said to help the poor, feed the hungry, heal the sick and clothe the naked. If the shelter I gave you the number to doesn't have any available beds, my sister and I have a little cabin out by Lake Everfree. It might not be much, but it has hot water and the roof doesn't leak. But you two won't be staying there for free, don't worry, we don't want or need your money. Your cost for staying there would be to keep up the place and the surrounding property, as well as helping us with any chores we ask for your help with. One more condition, if you wind up staying at out cabin, no more getting stumbling, falling down, blackout drunk, the last thing any of us needs is a bunch of empty and half-empty bottles and cans of booze lying around. Also if you want to attend church, I'm the pastor at Rockhoof's United Episcopalian Church, you are more than welcome."

Stan and Kyle took off their knit caps, placed them over the chests and tipped their heads. "I don't k-know how to thank you and your sister. If God doesn't let someone like you two into heaven, then he doesn't deserve to be called God."

Sunset had long since put her things into the back of the SUV, climbed into the backseat and drifted off to sleep. Celestia, Luna and Shining Armor waited around for the car from the taxi company to come around to pick up the two veterans. Shining Armor then bid the two sisters farewell.

"I think I'll take Sunset to my house.", Celestia said,"With me being an ordained minister, I can use that I'm head principal and being ordained to better sway the social workers."

"Celly, they won't care if you're a minister, a ditch digger, an undertaker or God himself. Your house is a one-bedroom cracker box.", Luna argued, "My house is also a a cracker box, but it has a small guest bedroom in the back."

"But all you have in that room is a futon. There aren't any dressers for her clothes."

"Something we can worry about in the next day or two. For now let's worry about getting Sunset a bed to sleep in. We can get all of her amenities later."

Celestia went make an argument, but Luna shot her a glare. "You know I'm right."

Celestia worked her jaw a couple of times in an attempt to make an argument, but couldn't think of one and sighed in defeat. "Your, right. Just don't glare at me like that. That was the same glare mom used."

Both sisters wilted slightly at the mention of their parents.

Luna recovered first and gave her sister a playful flick on the tip of her nose. "I might have gotten her glare, but you got her sunny disposition and eyes."

Hoping in the SUV, they drove off.

Pulling up to Luna's house, the two sisters hopped out. Celestia opened the back hatch to get Sunset's things as Luna opened up the back door and gave Sunset a nudge to wake her up.


***MONDAY***


Sunset was in a daze as she walked into the often disused bathroom in the hallway with the messed up lighting. This had definitely been a weird past few days, not just the events of the Fall Formal, but also Celestia and Luna finding out she was homeless, also staying in Luna's spare bedroom. Then there was finding out that opposite to most rumors about them, the two sisters didn't live in the same house, though they did live on the same block. Finishing up her business in the stall, she flushed the toilet and stepped out to wash her hands, that's when she saw Lightning Dust, Rolling Thunder and Short Fuse standing by the sinks, a crowd behind them chanting,"Fight-fight-fight!" Her being, until recently, a bully with her own toadies, recognized what was fixing to go down, this was a beatdown and they had gotten a crowd of students hyped up so their curiosity about seeing real-life violence could be sated, though there were a few who had a morbid desire to see blood in the crowd. There was no way of getting out of this without violence.

Sunset, being the former protege of Princess Celestia, had been taught among other things, hoof-to-hoof combat, though it had taken her some time to adapt what she had been taught into using hands. The crowd fell silent in anticipation as she brought her hands up in a boxer's stance, prepared to defend herself and trounce anyone who came at her, a pin could be heard dropping. The trio moved at her and the crowd of students began cheering.

At the back of the crowd a farm girl and an athlete tried to push through the wall of people,but to no avail.

Rainbow Dash looked over shoulder, seeing Fluttershy standing, hiding behind her hair, book pulled up high on her chest, almost to her chin. "Fluttershy! Help us! They're gonna beat her down!"

The yellow-skinned girl looked at her oldest friend, then to the crowd, then up and down the hallway, then ran off.

Rainbow turned to Applejack. "We lost Flutters!"

"She weren't much for violence anyways RD. Jus' Help me get through 'em all."

Sunset ducked, bobbed and weaved, avoiding the trio's attacks, as she waited for her opening, meanwhile the crowd shouted and brayed for violence. The opening showed itself and Sunset took advantage, Rolling Thunder tripped over her own feet and staggered. Sunset threw a short uppercut to the girl's midsection, driving the wind out of her, then grappled the girl and threw her into Lightning Dust. The two girls fell over into a pile of tangled limbs.

Sunset then turned her attention to Short Fuse. Rushing at him, she ducked and weaved past his punches, closing in and threw several jabs of her own. Throwing a haymaker, he blocked it, but the force of the punch sent him off balance. She followed up the haymaker with a shoulder block, sending the boy backwards into the crowd, who roughly shoved him forward.

Short Fuse, feeling a bit emasculated and having his pride bruise, lost his temper and rushed forward, throwing wild punches, which Sunset easily ducked or dodged.

Sunset, instead of keeping an eye on her surroundings, became hyper-fixated on Short fuse, ducking and dodging his blows, while answering with several jabs meant more to anger than harm as she goaded the boy further into wildly throwing punches to tire him out. A pair of turquoise each grabbed a fistful of hair. She hit the floor hard, with a loud thunk.

Sunset's ears rang and her lungs spasmed as stars danced before her eyes. A foot collided with the side of her face, causing her vision to flash white and she instinctively threw her hand up to protect her head. A foot stomped on her stomach, further driving the air from her. When a foot came at her face again, she reached out and grabbed it by the ankle. She quickly twisted the limb. A turquoise body landed on the floor. Flipping onto her hands and knees, a foot collided with the base of her sternum, driving out what air she had been able to suck back in. Push past the pain and focus on what you've been taught.

Sunset launched herself forward from her hands and knees, wrapping both arms around Short Fuse's waist and tackled the boy onto the floor. She quickly scrabbled on top of him and began raining blows down onto his face and chest as he tried to protect himself with his hands and forearms.

Rolling Thunder kicked Sunset hard in the side of the head. Time seemed to slow down and the world became swimmy as the bacon-haired girl slumped to the floor.

The trio stood side-by-side, two blood from their noses or lips.

"Pick her the fuck up.", Short Fuse growled, "I'm gonna make her pay!"

Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder picked Sunset up off the floor by her arms and held her tight as Short Fuse began waving his arms to further hype-up the crowd. Sunset weakly kicked at him. He grabbed her ankle, then threw a kick at her groin. The students at the front of the crowd 'oo-ed' at the kick. He lined up for a big punch.

Pain exploded across Sunset's face when the fist collided with it. Her head snapped back, then slumped forward, blood flowed from her nose and dripped onto the floor. Spots swirled and stars danced before her eyes. A fist came forward again, she tried to lean her head out of the way, it collided with her eye. A blow connected with her stomach, followed up by one to the side of her jaw. For a few seconds the sounds in the restroom became distant and muted and her vision became blurry.

The trio traded spots, Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder each took turns getting their shots on the bacon-haired girl.

Once the trio finished wailing on Sunset, her face was puffy and bruised, one eye was starting to swell shut, bruises covered the front of her body. Blood freely leaked from her lips and nose, dripping down onto her shirt and the floor. Her legs were rubbery, she was only able to stay upright because of the two holding her up by her arms, her mind barely clung to consciousness. The crowd had grown silent, the spectacle of violence and blood having stunned them into silence, even when Sunset was the queen bully, she never went this far, but they couldn't look away or leave, morbid curiosity taking hold.

"She don't look so good, Fuse.", Lightning Dust said.

"Yeah, we should just leave her here and let her bleed on the floor.", Rolling Thunder said in agreement.

"I got a better idea.", Short Fuse said maliciously, "Let's clean her up in the only place shit like her deserves." He pointed to the bathroom stall.

"I...uh...don't know. She's pretty bad busted up, Fuse. Maybe we should just leave her here and get outa here before we get busted.", Lightning Dust said.

Short Fuse snarled at his two friends and snatched Sunset by her wrist, pulling her from the two girls. He drug her across the floor to the stall and deposited the fire-haired girl in front of the toilet. "Wash yourself off in there like the piece of shit you are!"

Sunset weakly shook her head. "...over...'s over...ust go 'way."

Short Fuse snatched Sunset up by her hair. "I. Said. Clean. Your. Self. In. The. Toilet. Like. The. Piece. Of. Shit. You. Are.", he said through clenched teeth, accentuating every word. He then shoved her face-first into the toilet. She weakly clawed and scratched at his hand. He never saw the figure rushing up to him.

Wallflower Blush had been sitting in a stall, knees pulled to her chest as the sounds of violence filled the bathroom. After the sounds of violence died down, she hunkered near the door, silently debating with herself on whether or not to go out. She unlatched the stall door and dared a peek. She gasped at the sight of Short Fuse dragging Sunset across the floor and ducked back in the stall, latching the door back. She heard Sunset speaking weakly followed by Short Fuse speaking angrily followed by the sounds of bubbling. She dared another peek and it was clear that he was holding her head in the toilet. She ducked back in the stall. "I know she bullied me, but no one deserves this.", She whispered to herself, "Someone should do something to stop him." She balled up her fists to psyche herself up."This is stupid! This is stupid! This is stupid!", she repeated over and over again.

Building up what little courage she could, Wallflower rushed out of the stall. Without even thinking, she kicked the boy in his side.

Short Fuse was knocked away by the blow.

Sunset shoved herself away from the toilet bowl with all of her remaining strength, coughing up the disgusting water as she felt sick.

Wallflower stood there stunned. She didn't expect to actually succeed st kicking him away and a small flicker of pride welled up in her core.

Short Fuse sat on his butt staring up at the green-skinned girl who had kicked him. Fresh anger burned and he sprung up, lunging at her.

Wallflower backpedaled, trying to get away from the angry boy, but tripped over her own feet and stumbled into the wall.

Short Fuse's fingers wrapped around the girl's neck and he began choking her for everything her was worth as he pinned her against the wall.

Wallflower flailed ineffectually against Short Fuse's grip. Her face turned red, then purple.

Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder stared momentarily dumbfounded, then rushed forward to pull their friend off the girl he was choking. He shrugged them off.

Rolling Thunder reared her foot back and brought it up with as much force as she could between Short Fuse's thighs.

All the air left Short Fuse's body and his eyes went crossed. Both hands went to his crotch and he doubled over, falling to the floor with a whimper and curled up into the fetal position.

Wallflower slumped to the floor, coughing and sputtering. Her hands went to her neck defensively and she scooted on her butt across the floor defensively, making as much space as possible between her and the boy.

Right then Fluttershy had returned with Celestia, Luna and a dozen other teachers. The adults quickly pushed their way through the crowd.

Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder seeing they were boned, leaned against the wall. Short Fuse, having recovered from his low blow, simply grumbled cuss words under his breath.

The teachers quickly checked on Sunset and Wallflower. Out in the hallway, three dozen students had been lined up against the walls as the teachers handed out detention slips like they were party favors.

Fluttershy, Rainbow and Applejack guided Sunset and Wallflower to the nurse's office.


***


While Celestia stood in the parking lot talking with the police, Luna sat in her office glaring at Short Fuse,Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder. "You three should consider yourselves lucky. Principal Celestia is convincing the police to write this up as a simple fight instead of having you three drug off to juvie. But that doesn't mean you're getting off scott-free." She got up, walked over to a file cabinet, opened a drawer and pulled out three sets of black with green striped sweat suits and tossed them to the three students. "As of right now you three are in the washouts program. That means for the next twelve weeks for two hours after school and six hours on the weekends you're to do whatever tasks myself, principal Celestia, the custodial staff or the grounds keeping staff tells you to do, and I can assure you that Willie loves making students who wind up in the program trimming the football field with scissors and edging the sidewalks with butter knives. Am I understood?" The three students nodded. "Good. The whole time you're on school property, you're to wear those sweats. There is a bathroom right down the hall, you're to go in there one-by-one, change out of your clothes and put on those sweats. If you can't find the bathroom, ask Miss Inkwell and she'll point you to where it is. And I'll be calling your parents."

All three students visibly gulped.


***


Sunset and Wallflower sat in the nurse's office. Both had been given a cup of water and a packet of acetaminophen, with the former also given a cold compress for her eye, as there was little legally that a school nurse could do.


***


Sunset and Luna walked out of the urgent care. Sunset would have preferred not to go,but Luna had insisted saying 'It was her duty as guardian, even if only temporarily, to make sure she wasn't seriously injured.'.

Sunset knew she wasn't seriously injured. Even though she was bipedal on this side of the portal, she was still a pony. That meant she had denser bones and muscles than humans, which meant she was more resistant to injury, as well as stronger, not to a freakish level, but she could lift, carry and drag more than her apparent size would suggest. The doctor had said she was lucky to have not suffered any serious injuries as far as he could tell, but still ordered a head X-ray just to be sure.


***


Short Fuse sat on his bed, the bruise on his cheek was a faint ache where his father had back-handed him  after leaving the school parking lot compared to the bruises on his back where he had beaten him with a belt. His stomach gurgled with hunger, his father had spent the little bit of money he had earned from the temp job on booze and was currently passed out on the couch.

Short Fuse reached under his bed and pulled out an object that was wrapped in an old T-shirt. Something he had stolen from his father's room. Something his father had thought he had long ago pawned for quick cash or traded for booze. Unwrapping the T-shirt, he revealed the object, a small nine-millimetre pistol. He held the pistol in his hands, staring down at it hard. It would be so easy, just walk into the front room, shoot the man who was passed out drunk on the couch and keep shooting until the weapon went click. His thoughts drifted to the half of a box of ammunition hidden in the back of his sock drawer. Maybe after he shot his dad, he could then track down Sunset and shoot her, or maybe he could just turn the gun on himself.

Short Fuse thought long and hard about shooting his father or Sunset or himself, but ultimately couldn't work up the gumption. Cursing himself for being a coward, he rolled the pistol back up in the old T-shirt and slipped it between the mattress and box springs.


***TWO WEEKS LATER: FRIDAY***


Short Fuse reeled as his father punched him. The man had been in a bad mood, which had been exasperated by the fact he had started drinking early that morning. The man was angry that there was no food in the house and when Short Fuse had told him that it was because he had blown the money on booze rather than buying groceries, his anger had exploded. He had accused his son of lying and of eating up all the food in the house.

Short Fuse ducked a poorly aimed punch his father had thrown and then threw one back himself. The punch wasn't very strong, but the man had staggered and stumbled, more from being alcohol-impaired, tripped over his own feet and fell onto the floor. That's when something snapped in the boy and he stormed out of the kitchen.

"Get back 'ere boy! I'll f'ckin' kill you!" The drunken, enraged man drug himself up to his feet, gripping onto the counter. Grasping onto the handle of a drawer, he snatched it open, spilling its contents onto the floor. Bending over awkwardly, he picked up a kitchen knife and stormed off after his son. "C'mere ya l'il bastard! I'm gonna cut you up real good!" He staggered through the house, heading towards Short Fuse's bedroom.

Short Fuse came out of his room brandishing the pistol.

"An' jus' whut d'ya think you're gonna do wit' that?" He did a staggering lunge forward.

Short Fuse pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through the man's throat. He dropped the knife and brought his hands up to his throat as bright red blood poured out his throat. Short Fuse pulled the trigger two more times. Two bullets ripped through the man's chest and he slumped to the floor, a slowly expanding pool of red forming around his body.

After a few moments the realization of what he had done hit him. Short Fuse panicked and went to find his phone to call nine-one-one. Looking down at his phone laying on the bed, he reached for it, then stopped."They'll probably just lock me up. If I'm going out, then I'm taking that Sunset bitch with me." Going over to the dresser, he fished the half empty box of ammo out of the sock drawer,  ejected the magazine, topped it off and reinserted it back into the pistol. After getting dressed and pulling a dark hoodie, he put the pistol into the front pocket, then walked outside to wait for the bus.

Lightning Dust walked through the school parking lot with Short Fuse. "SO why aren't you wearing the washout sweats?"

"Eh, fuck it. What can they do to me?"

"Uh, suspend you and keep you in the program longer."

"Is that all? Figured they'd call the cops on me or something. Well I ain't wearin' 'em any more and they can't make me."

"Dayum! I've never seen this gangsta side of you before. I like it."

"So where's Rolling?"

"Her dad got tee-boned at a red light while driving her to school, so she's gonna be late. I'm surprised she didn't text you."

"She probably did, I just haven't checked my phone this morning."

Short Fuse and Lightning Dust walked through the doors of the school. Students were milling about the halls, waiting on the first bell to ring. Lightning Dust walked over to a group of her friends to chat with them for a few minutes. Short Fuse laid eyes on Sunset Shimmer, reached into the hoodie's pocket, gripping the pistol and began walking forward. "Slut-set!", he shouted and began pulling the pistol out of the hoodie.

Students paused to look at who was shouting. Lightning Dust turned around and froze, seeing the metallic gleam in Short Fuse's hand. Wallflower Blush and Fluttershy, coming out of the bathroom together, froze in place as they saw the pistol come out.

Sunset turned around to see who had just called her slut and Short Fuse pulled the trigger. *BLAM*

Students screamed and scrambled over and past each other in a panic.

Sunset felt a burning pain in her stomach as her legs folded under her, sending her sprawling to the floor. She brought her hands up to her stomach, feeling something wet and hot.

Lightning Dust, Fluttershy and Wallflower stood frozen in place, fear and panic anchoring them in place.

Short Fuse stalked over and aimed the pistol at Sunset's face.

Sunset felt tears stinging in her eyes and a burning pain in her stomach. She couldn't feel her legs. Why couldn't she feel her legs? A figure loomed over her. There was only one word that she could think at that moment, so she spoke it out loud. "Why?"

"Because fuck you, that's why." As Short Fuse prepared to pull the trigger again, something slammed into his side, sending him stumbling away. The pistol went off, the bullet narrowly missing Sunset's head and striking the linoleum-covered, concrete floor, shattering into a million pieces.

Fluttershy, utterly terrified out of her mind, rushed forward as fast as her legs could carry her when Short Fuse stood over her friend and aimed the pistol at her head. Leveling her shoulder at the boy, she threw her weight into him with all her might. As he staggered away, he own momentum carried her into the wall head first, then blackness.

After Short Fuse recovered from being body checked, he stared dumbfounded at the unconscious form of Fluttershy, then at the prone form of Sunset. Hearing footsteps, he looked up and saw several teachers running down the hall in his direction. Turning on his heel, he bolted out the door.

A moment later Lightning Dust ran out the door after her friend. "Fuse! Stop!"

He stopped, turned around and pulled back his hood.

"Why Fuse, why?"

Short Fuse said nothing and stuck the muzzle into his mouth.

"NOOOOOOOOO!"

*BLAM*

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The bullet ripped through the back of Short Fuse's mouth, through his brain and out the back of his head, leaving a gaping wound. He slumped to the ground limply and a pool of red formed around his head.

Lightning Dust felt the bile grab her by the throat. Tears blurred her vision. Scrambling over to the body of her friend, she dropped to her knees. Grabbing the pistol, she threw it away. "Short Fuse! Don't do this to me! Wake up! Wake up! Wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup!" She began pounding her fists on his chest."No! No! No! Nononononono! Nnnnnnnnnnnnnooooooooo!" A pair of white hands grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her away."Noooooo! I want to stay with him!"

Principal Celestia drug Lightning Dust away, turned the girl away from her dead friend's body and hugged her close as she screamed and cried. "Shh! Shh! It's okay. You're safe. Shh! Shh!" Tears stung her eyes and ran down her cheeks as she stared as the lifeless form of the boy.

In the distance dozens of sirens on police cars screamed out.


***


Groups of students stared on in shocked silence as EMTs loaded the stretcher that held Sunset Shimmer into the back of an ambulance. Another group of EMTs helped Fluttershy into the back of another ambulance, they had checked her out and insisted she go to the hospital to ensure she didn't have a concussion or a skull fracture.


***TWO WEEKS EARLIER***


In a diner across town three ethereal voices sang out. The patrons who had gathered to eat began to argue with one another. Soon arguing became shouting matches. Tempers boiled over and fist fights broke out.

In a corner booth three feminine figures wearing dark hoodies sang in ethereal voices. The figures pulled back their hoods, the gems on chokers around their necks glowed a sickly, unearthly green.

"Bleh! The feelings of suffering and conflict of young humans is just so bland, especially when they don't have a famine in their country or a war right on their nation's doorstep.", Adagio said, "Now Russia back under Tsar Nicholas II, that was some truly exquisite suffering. Lenin created some decent suffering, but it just wasn't the same."

"What about that failed Austrian artist and the amount of suffering he made? What was his name again?", Sonata asked.

"That was too much and was making us sick. There is a limit to how much one can create at one time that we can take.", Adagio replied, "Just like Joseph did. You know as well as I that humans don't need an excuse to inflict suffering on each other. We just need to find the right people to influence to create the right amount of feelings of suffering and conflict, then we can grow fat and even find a way back to inflict it on Equestria."

"I just wish we could have waited until I got my home run gravy fries before draining these people.", Aria said, looking through the menu.

"Aria, shut up before I turn you into fish sticks.", Adagio said.

The three sirens left the diner some time later, leaving its patrons in a barely conscious state. A bright light caught their attention. Looking up, they saw a rainbow-colored double helix in the distance rising high into the air, then arc downwards at an angle.

"That's Equestrian magic!", Sonata exclaimed.

"Yes. Yes it is.", Adagio said, tenting her fingers as a wicked smile spread on her face."You know what that means girls? Dinner time!"

"Does that mean we can get a fish sandwich?", Aria asked.

"I'll make you a fish sandwich, Aria.", Adagio growled.

"You will?! I didn't know we had any fish patties left back in the room."

Adagio facepalmed.


***PRESENT DAY***


Trauma teams scrambled at the emergency room as the gurney holding Sunset burst through the doors. Nurses swarmed to her. A doctor rushed over. "What do we have here?"

"Gunshot victim. Heavy blood loss and potential spinal injury.", an EMT replied, "We gave her plasma, but don't know her blood type, so we didn't give her any red blood cells or platelets."

The doctor nodded. "A spinal injury is serious, but let's focus on getting the bleeding stopped first." He gently tapped Sunset on her cheek. "Miss Shimmer, do you know where you are?"

"H-hospital."

"Very good. Do you know your blood type?"

"T-Z Neutral."

The doctor looked at the nurse. "Okay, she's a bit loopy from blood loss. Get a sample for the labs so we can get her type."

The nurse jabbed a needle into Sunset's arm and drew a vial of blood. Writing down pertinent information of the label, she hurried off to the labs.

After a quick examination, the trauma team determined that Sunset had serious internal bleeding and perforated intestines. Cutting her out of her clothes, they noted the red and yellow yin-yang sun symbols on her hips, but figured they were tattoos. She was quickly rushed to emergency surgery.

The anesthesiologist placed a breathing mask over Sunset's mouth and nose. "Alright, breathe deep and count backwards from ten."

Sunset took deep breaths and began counting. "Ten, nine, eight, seven..."

Luna sat in the waiting room on pins and needles. School had been cancelled because of the shooting. After giving her statement to the police, she jumped in her car and sped off to the hospital. After filling out the forms to the best of her ability, she waited for what felt like an eternity. A doctor came out to talk with her.

"Are you Luna Faust?"

"Yes. How is Sunset? How long until I can see her?"

"I'm not sure as of yet. I assure you she's in good hands. I have a question or two I want to ask you first. Am I correct in assuming you're Sunset's guardian?"

"Yes."

"Do you know her blood type?"

"No I don't. I just recently became her guardian."

"Not a problem. Does Sunset have any preexisting medical conditions you're aware of?"

"None that I'm aware of. Until recently she was homeless. Has there been some sort of complication?"

The doctor sat down next to her. "No. She's going through emergency surgery to seal off her ruptured artery and deal with her perforated intestine."

Luna swooned.

"It's okay Miss Faust. This is perfectly normal for someone who has been shot in such a place. The real concern is that she has spinal trauma and will most likely be in a wheelchair."

Luna nodded dumbly, there was a buzzing in her ears that was growing louder. She couldn't hear what the doctor was saying. Sunset was going to be in a wheelchair. True, Luna was an amputee herself and she had learned how to get along well enough with a prosthetic. but being chair-bound was different from losing part of a leg. If worse came to worse, she could get around well enough with a crutch, but being crippled was different. It was only then that she realized that the doctor had stopped talking and that she was still nodding.

"Miss Faust, are okay?"

"I'm sorry doctor. It's a lot to take in and I zoned out for a bit. Could you repeat what you were saying?"

"Perfectly okay. I'm a father myself and if one of my kids were in the position Sunset is in, I'd be lucky to be in half as good of a state as you are. I was talking about how Sunset is going to have to go through physical therapy. It's too early to tell how much feeling and motion she's going to retain, but stranger things have happened."

Luna listened to the doctor. After he finished speaking, she said, "Thank you...you know I never asked you your name.

The doctor smiled. "My name's Night Light."

"Thank you Doctor Night Light. Please let me know when Sunset gets out of surgery. And where is your hospital's chapel?"

Luna stepped into the chapel. The chapel had been dedicated Sainte Somnambula. All around the room images depicted the blindfolded sainte healing the sick, feeding the hungry, defeating a beast with her courage and wits, and banishing the three witches. Behind the altar there was a statue of the sainte holding a gold cross in one hand and a heart in the other. Bowing before the altar, she interlaced her fingers, bowed her head and began quietly praying.

A nun of Ste. Somanbula came out, wearing the traditional thin blindfold of her order. "My child, what disturbs you?"

"This girl, Sunset Shimmer, who I've recently taken into my home and became her guardian is undergoing emergency surgery. A boy brought a gun to school this morning and shot her."

The nun knelt down next to Luna. "Then let us pray for Sunset Shimmer together that Jesus heals her and the blindfolded sainte guides her to peace."


***


Doctor Night Light stood outside the surgery recovery room looking over the paperwork that the lab technician handed him. "Are you sure about this?"

"Yes, doctor. I even ran the tests three times myself. She has a blood type I've not seen before. I recommend getting another sample of her blood and sending it to the lab up in Capitol City, maybe they've seen something like this, or maybe another doctor has seen a case like hers."

Night Light scratched his chin. "I'll have to ask her guardian first. No need to risk a lawsuit."


***ONE WEEK LATER***


Doctor Night Light stared at the lab work readout that had been sent back from the lab in Capitol City. He drummed his fingers on the desk impatiently as he sat on hold while waiting to be transferred. There had to be some sort of mix-up at the lab. They handled all sorts of blood, human and animal. They had to have accidentally sent back the wrong sample.

"Doctor Chrysalis' office. This is Thorax speaking."

"Yes. Hello. There has been some sort of mix-up. I think you sent me the wrong results."

"I see. Could you send me the name of the patient and the specimen case number. We'll clear that problem up for you. We at Hive Labs pride ourselves on our accuracy. If there has been a problem, we will fix that for you."

"The patient's name is Sunset Shimmer." Night Light quickly read off the specimen case number.

"Ah yes, we have it here. Sunset Shimmer. An unusual blood type, but the DNA markers of an unusual horse mare, age estimated to be somewhere between twenty and thirty years. What is the problem? Did we send the lab results for the wrong horse?"

"That's the problem. Sunset Shimmer isn't a thirty-year old horse, she's a fifteen year-old human girl."

"I see. So you're not a veterinarian?"

"No."

"Hold please."

"Don't put me on..." The line clicked and generic music played over the phone again. "...hold again." After a few minute the line clicked again.

"Hello, this is Doctor Chrysalis. What is this about a fifteen-year old girl?"
> New beginnings and learning to move forward
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna looked through the chart that contained medical Sunset's information.

"It appears the Sunset Shimmer has a rare blood type, one that I can honestly say I've never seen before.", Dr. Night Light explained.

Luna flipped back and forth through the pages. "So what does this mean exactly? Will she need special medications or have any medical conditions I need to be aware of?"

Dr. Night Light leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. "Honestly, other than her unusual blood type, she appears to be a perfectly healthy fifteen-year old girl. If it weren't for her getting shot, she could have possibly gone her whole life without ever knowing. I don't think she'll need any special medications or have any unusual medical conditions." What he didn't tell her was that according to the tests, Sunset had the blood type similar to a horse, he figured that was too outlandish, a human having similar blood to a horse. Deep inside he shuddered remembering the conversation with Chrysalis, the head of Hive Labs, something about her voice felt wrong. "We'd like to hold her for one more week to make sure she's recovering properly from her traumatic incident and her emergency surgery. In a couple of days I'll begin scheduling her for physical therapy, and I'd like you to attend as well."

"What will she be going through with her physical therapy?"

"Building up her upper body strength. Massages and manual flexing of her legs so the joints don't lock up. How to do every day things, like getting in and out of bed, using the bathroom, how to dress herself, and how to get in and out of her chair."






***PARTS UNKNOWN***


Agents Cloak, Dagger and Shadow sat around a conference table. The three of them looked through a stack of files.

"It would appear that our broadband EMP detectors that were set around Catherlot City detected a pair pulses unlike anything we've detected before.", Shadow said, "The first of the pulses lasted nearly ten minutes and the second only lasted about thirty seconds. They lasted longer than what's normally been detected in Canterlot City."

"Where did the pulses originate from?", Cloak asked.

"The high school.", Shadow replied. "They were first detected there back in the cold war when NORAD set up detectors to see how far the EMP of detonated nuclear bombs reached. That's when there was a series of unusually regular EMPs were first detected."

Dagger flipped through the decades old files on Canterlot City. "It appears that every two-point-five years there are regular pulses, usually lasting just fractions of a second for three days, the beginning and ending of the odd cycles usually indicated by a single pulse that lasts nearly a second. There have been attempts to explain it, from things as mundane as there being an odd quirk in the magnetic field there, all the way to the insane like there is a magical vortex."

Cloak spoke up. "Those two unusually strong pulses were much higher than is normally read in the city. The first pulse was about a hundred times stronger and lasted nearly ten minutes, the second one was much stronger but only lasted thirty seconds, the sensors read a thousand times stronger before the sensors went haywire. It's speculated that it could be magnitudes of orders higher. According to the estimates our analysts made, the second pulse was equal to what Earth's magnetic field puts out in a year."

"Did any civilians film what happened? Any passing cop car's dashcam? Any tourist who thinks they're a big name movie director? A cellphone video?", Shadow asked, "What about any satellites that happened to be passing overhead at the time?"

"There were no satellites passing overhead at that time and there were reports of cameras blinking out or shutting down in a radius of twelve blocks. There have been reports from eyewitnesses saying they saw demons, a coiling rainbow of light, and teenage girls with horse ears and feathery wings.", Dagger replied. "Though something did damage the front of the school. Our local office in Canterlot City has kept a tight lid on it, informing local news stations that it was a poorly documented gas pipeline that had been laid down back in the thirties that ruptured."

"Good.", Shadow said, "Last thing we need is the CIA, NSA or the army getting hold of this information until we have found out what caused it and figure out to weaponize it, then we'll make a fortune selling it to the highest bidder." His phone chirped alerting him to a message. "If you'll excuse me good sirs, I need to check this." He pulled out his phone and checked the message. Seeing that it was a file from Hive Labs, a smile spread on his lips and he clicked to download the file. "My apologies gentlemen, that was another venture. I suggest we have the mercenaries of Storm to go on alert for when we discover the origins of what created the pulse and pull some strings to get Code Name: Baby Doll pulled out of prison in Morocco. If we are successful in our venture, Number One will be most pleased with us." He interlinked his fingers in front of his chest in the crude likeness of an octopus. "All hail Specter!"

Cloak and Dagger also did their hands in the symbol."All hail Specter!"


***


In the center of the high security U.N. prison on the island of Morocco sat what looked like a fourteen-year old girl in a solitary confinement cell. In reality she was a forty-five year old woman, one of the most dangerous freelance international spies currently serving out a one hundred and fifty year sentence, her name is Cozy Glow. Don't let her youthful appearance fool you, currently eighty-three countries all wanted her on charges of espionage, both political and corporate, thirteen of them had a shoot-on-site order. The only reason why she looked so youthful was because of experiments of questionable ethical nature that was carried out on her when she had become Specter's youngest operative.

Cozy Glow looked up when she heard the sound of the key being pushed into the lock of her small, cramped cell. It wasn't time for the guards to bring her evening meal yet, nor was it time to take her out to the yard. She thought that she was going to be strip searched and have her cell tossed again. Instead she was surprised to see a small squad of Specter field operatives. The lead operative gave her the interlinked finger octopus salute, which she returned.

The head field operative tossed her a duffel bag. She opened it up seeing a pantsuit in her size and a sealed manila envelope.

"So what's the target this time?"




Sunset woke up from one of her many post-surgery naps. In her still sleep-clouded mind she turned to get up and use the bathroom, only her legs didn't respond. Instead of her feet touching down on the floor, she tumbled out of the hospital bed unceremoniously. "Ow! Ow! Owie! Ow!" The sleep fog was gone in an instant as her face made a touchdown on the floor, she smelled the iron in her nose, tasted copper on her tongue, the stitches in her stomach throbbed with angry pulses and her forehead ached. She flailed about on the floor trying to reach the call button, hoping that when she fell, she had knocked it down. No such luck. Propping herself up on her elbows, careful not to twist herself around too much, she looked for a way to call for some assistance.

Sunset wracked her brain, she needed a way to get someone's attention.

The click of the latch on the door caught her attention. Sunset looked over her shoulder, saw the yellow hand of Fluttershy grasping the door handle and heard the raspy voice of Rainbow Dash.

"I know 'Shy, it's just that hospitals give me the heebie-jeebies. It's all those needles. Plus now that Sunset's a cripple."

"Rainbow Dash! We don't know that for sure. All we know is that she was--Oh my!"

Light cyan eyes and blue-green eyes locked.

Fluttershy was holding a small stack of schoolbooks and papers in front of her chest. "Oh my! Oh goodness! Are you okay?" She took an unsure step forward.

"'Shy, what's goin' on?" Rainbow Dash pushed into the room past her friend. "Oh. Uh. Hi, Sunset. How are things?"

"Get a nurse.", Sunset said feeling nonplussed and a bit embarrassed, considering she had fallen out of bed and how hospital gowns were generally aligned.

Fluttershy nodded and bolted out of the room.

Rainbow Dash walked over. "Here, lemme help ya up."

Sunset swatted her hand away. "No! Don't!"

Rainbow Dash recoiled as if someone had waved a snake at her. "Why not?! I'm just tryin' to help you up. You need to learn to trust me."

"Use your head for something other than hitting soccer balls off of, Rainbow Dash! If you find someone on the floor with a spinal injury, you don't move them unless you know how to do so, otherwise you could injure them further."

Sunset felt the anger, more at herself and the situation than anything else, burn in her chest. It quickly faded when she saw the hurt on Rainbow's face. The athlete's lip trembled as tears welled in her eyes, she began backpedaling out of the room. "I'm sorry, Rainbow. I didn't mean to snap at you."

Rainbow Dash didn't hear Sunset's apology over her own feeling of humiliation. She turned and bolted down the hallway, loudly berating herself and calling herself stupid.

Just then Fluttershy returned with a nurse.

The nurse gingerly lifted Sunset back onto the bed. She then quickly checked over the amber-skinned girl, making sure she didn't rip open any of her stitches or seriously hurt herself. "It looks like other than a bump on the head, a bloody nose and a split lip, you didn't hurt yourself. I'll still have to report it to the doctor and he may want to do further examinations to ensure you're fine. I'll get you a compress for the bump on your head and some acetaminophen for the pain."

After the nurse left, Fluttershy stood in the doorway with a worried look on her face. "What happened with Rainbow?"

Sunset cast her eyes downwards, feeling ashamed. "I kinda snapped at her. I didn't mean...*sigh* I was more upset at the situation, what with face planting on the floor and you two seeing my butt."

Fluttershy chuckled. "Well it is a cute butt."

Sunset blushed at Fluttershy commenting on her butt. "Uh...thanks...I think?" She cleared her throat and let the heat dissipate from her cheeks. "Could you get Dash back in here? I need to apologize for blowing up at her...and let her know I'm not mad at her, I was mad at the situation."

Fluttershy nodded. "Mhm! Oh! Before I forget, I brought you some of your schoolwork." She looked around for a moment. "Uh, where do I..."

Sunset gestured to the small end table by her hospital bed. "You can put it there, Flutters."

Fluttershy placed Sunset's schoolwork on the end table, then left to find Rainbow Dash.

Twenty minutes later the pair returned.

Sunset was thumbing through some of the schoolwork when she heard the door click. Looking over the top of the schoolwork, her heart sank seeing the defeated look on Rainbow's face.

"Sunset...", Rainbow's voice has an even more raspy quality to it than usual, it was been clear she had been crying, "I-I want to ap--"

"Rainbow, no...", Sunset interrupted, "...I'm the one who should apologize. I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. You didn't know not to move someone when they have a spinal injury, or might have a spinal injury. You were just trying to help. I was more mad and upset at falling out of bed...and the fact that you two saw my butt."

Rainbow snickered. "That was your butt?! It looked like you had two boards strapped to your back. Bah-ha-ha-ha!" She gripped her sides laughing as she fell on her butt.

Sunset fumed at Rainbow.

"Rainbow Dash!", Fluttershy scolded, "It's not nice to make fun of someone's butt! I think Sunset's got a nice butt. It fits her properly. How would you feel if someone made a joke about your breasts?"

Rainbow stopped laughing and a slight blush spread on her cheeks.

"What's all this 'bout butts an' breasts?", Applejack asked stepping through the doorway holding plate covered in cellophane.

Sunset scratched the back of her head nervously. "Well, I fell out of bed because I had to pee and forgot that my legs don't work anymore. While I was on the floor trying to figure out to call the nurse, 'Shy and Dash walked in, and they saw my butt through the back of the gown. Then I kinda snapped at Rainbow when she tried to help me up off of the floor. I managed to apologize to her, then she made the crack about my butt just before you walked in."

Applejack walked further into the hospital room. "Heh! Butt crack."

"Did someone make a funny joke about butt cracks?", Pinkie asked, bouncing in.

"No, Pinkie. Nobody made jokes about butt cracks. Rainbow made a joke about Sunset's butt b'cause she an' dash saw her butt when she fell outa bed."

"So Dashie made a butt crack?", Pinkie asked with a snigger. She soon burst out into a fit of giggle-snorts.

"Pinkie Pie!", Rarity scolded as she walked in the hospital room, "It is unlady-like to make jokes about posteriors."

"Hail, hail, that gang's all here.", Sunset grumbled under her breath.

"Rares, Pinkie didn't make any jokes about anyone's butt.", Applejack interjected, "Rainbow made a joke about Sunset's butt and Pinkie made a joke about Rainbow making a butt crack. Heh-heh!"

Rarity waved her finger at Rainbow Dash."Rainbow Dash! It is most unlady-like to make jokes or unwanted comments about someone's posterior!"

"Can everybody please shut up about my butt!?", Sunset shouted.

"What's all this about butts?", Doctor Night Light said entering the room.

Sunset facepalmed.

Pinkie took in a deep breath. "WellSunsetfelloutabedandFluttershyandRainbowDashwalkedintimetoseeher...mmmmf...mmmmf...mmmmf!"

Applejack pinched Pinkie's lips closed, cutting the party girl's words. "Ah dun think th' doc needs tuh be drowned in words, Pinkie. B'sides, Ah'm pretty sure he's seen so many butts that it dun phase him none."

Doctor Night Light only gave a polite chuckle. "If you ladies would excuse me, please? I need to make sure your friend isn't seriously hurt." He turned his head to the door. "Nurse?"

The five girls turned and left the room to wait in the hallway as a nurse walked in.

After the nurse closed the door and stepped up next to the bed, Doctor Night Light leaned forward and said, "Alright, let's get you checked out and make sure you're okay, so you can get back to your friends."

Sunset blinked the spots from her eyes when the doctor shined a pen light in her eyes. She winced in pain when he poked at the bump on her forehead. He ran his fingers along her nose, checked the split on her lip, made her open her mouth and shined the light in her mouth. He then ran his fingers along her jawline and reached around to squeeze the back of her neck in several places. Grunting in satisfaction, he quickly scribbled down several things on her chart.

"Alright miss Shimmer, I need to check under your gown. Just relax and I'll be done quicker than two jiggles of a lamb's tail."

Sunset squenched her eyes shut and threw the sheet over her head in embarrassment. Even before she had left Equestria, she was always embarrassed when visiting the gynecologist for routine checkups and pelvic examinations, even though the doctor wasn't giving her a pelvic exam, it still didn't make her feel any less uncomfortable. The doctor quickly examined her stitches, poked at her stomach in a few places and listened with his stethoscope in several places. Pulling her gown back in place, he scribbled several things down onto her chart and tapped her on the arm to let her know he was finished.

"Well Miss Shimmer, everything appears to be okay. I suggest putting something cool on that bump, and taking some acetaminophen for pain if you need it. If you experience dizziness, nausea, or feel any unusual pain or discomfort in your tummy, call a nurse.", Doctor Night Light said, "I'll let your friends know they come back in and visit with you some more." Walking to the door, he pulled the handle. It swung open and five girls landed in a heap on the floor in the door frame. Looking down at the five girls on the floor, their cheeks pink with surprised embarrassment, he chuckled. "Your friend is ready to see you again." Stepping over the pile of girls, he walked down the hallway, flipping the ink pen back and forth in his fingers as he whistled a tune. I bet Twilight would love to hang out with those girls. It would do her some good to get out of the house and do something other than study for college.

The girls pulled themselves back up to their feet. Applejack was the first to approach Sunset's bed and pulled the cellophane off the plate.

"Ah whipped ya up a whole mess o' apple fritters. Like Granny always says, 'Hospital food dun heal no one up right-n-proper. Tuh heal th' body, ya need tuh feed th' soul.'"

The farm girl placed the plate full of deep fried apple pastries in Sunset's lap who in turn picked one up and took a bite. Almost immediately her eyes sparkled when the flavor hit her tongue. With loud munching sounds she scarfed down the deep fried pastries. She swallowed down the last bite, which was followed a second later by a burp.

Sunset blushed and covered her mouth. "Oh! Excuse me!"

Applejack chuckled at Sunset. "T'ain't bad manners, jus' good food. B'sides like my cousin Braeburn always says, 'Better comin' out th' attic than th' basement.'"

Pinkie giggle-snorted at Applejack's comment.

Sunset, feeling a bit more emboldened at Pinkie's laughing at Applejack's comment and having a belly full of apple fritters decided to add to the humor. "Only now if it comes out of the basement, it's going to be a bit harder as I can't lean to one side."

Pinkie and Rainbow fell into each other's arms with sputtering giggles. Applejack let out a series of belly laughs. Fluttershy snickered and giggled as she held a hand over her mouth. Rarity attempted to hide her amusement at the crude, unlady-like humor, she failed.

Once the laughter at the crude humor died down, Sunset's expression turned serious. Worry and sorrow filled her voice. "I thank you all for coming to visit me." Her voice cracked. "I'm so, so sorry for how I treated you all for all those years. *hsnf* What I did was unfor--"

"Think nothing of it, darling.", Rarity said, cutting off Sunset as she sat down on the hospital bed, "We'd do anything to help you out. You may have behaved poorly in the past, but that's behind us." She wiggled her hips slightly. "This mattress is awful lumpy."

Sunset looked where Rarity was sitting. "Uh Rares, you're sitting on my foot."

Rarity jumped up from the bed all-a-fluster. "Oh my my my! I'm so sorry darling! I didn't realize I was sitting on you!" She dropped to her knees. "Please please please forgive me! I didn't know I was--"

Sunset tried to tell the fashionista everything was okay, but she had descended into hysterics. Taking a deep breath, Sunset shouted, "Rarity! Calm the fuck down!"

The use of shouted vulgarity snapped Rarity mostly out of her hysterics.

"There's nothing to forgive. You didn't do it out of any ill-will, you just made a mistake."

The six girls had been chatting for an hour when Luna walked into the hospital room. She smiled as she looked at the chatting girls. She cleared her throat to get the girls' attention. "I need to talk with Sunset alone for a bit."

The five girls nodded and gathered their things up.

"Ah need tuh get back tuh th' farm. Apples ain't gon' pick themselves."

"I need to get to the animal shelter. Today's my day for volunteering."

"I've got my apprenticeship with Fancy Pants. Ta-ta darlings!"

"I gotta help Mr. and Mrs. Cake with the afternoon rush."

"Well I got nothin' goin' on. Practice was cancelled."

Luna shot the athlete a searing sidelong glare. Rainbow instinctively withered from the glance, knowing it all too well as the one that she usually received just before getting detention.

"I uh...I'll go and find something to do that isn't here."

Once Luna and Sunset were alone in the room, the vice-principal grabbed a chair and placed it next to the hospital bed. Sitting down, she pulled from her purse that Celestia had several times joked 'Was big enough to hold a mid-sized sedan with enough room left over for two motorcycles.' a stack of papers. She blew out a sigh laced heavily with apprehension. "First off let me say that it is the duty of both myself and my sister to report your living conditions to DFCS and CPS, something neither of us particularly enjoy doing. You've been officially put into the foster system."

Visions of Sunset's youth when she was a filly of barely five years old when her mother had abandoned her on the steps of an orphanage. She opened her mouth to speak, but Luna raised a finger to cut her off.

"It is my duty as an employee of the Williams County educational system to report to the department of family and children services, and child protective services. That doesn't mean I'm abandoning you to be shipped off to a children's home somewhere clear across the state." Luna shuddered at the memories of her experiences when visiting one of those places, and the stories of what should have been legally declared slavery. "I know a few case workers who owed me a favor or two who agreed to help fast track the paperwork to make me your foster mother...that is if you want me as your foster mother."

Sunset mulled it over in her head for a moment. "Yes, I'd like to be your foster daughter."

Luna smiled at that. Pulling a pen from her purse, she signed, initialed and dated the various documents on the marked lines. "I'm getting a wheelchair ramp and a special shower chair installed at the house. But don't think for a moment that you're getting off easy. Besides your normal schoolwork and homework, you'll be expected to have household chores. Then there's your physical therapy and family counseling. A case worker will pop by whenever they feel like it. I'll also need you to be upfront and forthright with Celestia and myself about pony magic and if there are any other users of pony magic from your original world that may be here and could cause troubles."

Sunset nodded. "I'll divulge any information I know. But as far as I know, there's no other ponies or creatures from Equestria here."

Luna hummed thoughtfully. "Well I can't ask you to offer any information you don't know." She put the paperwork back in her purse. "Oh, and one more thing, I attend church every Sunday. Now I don't know what kind of religious beliefs pony-people have so I won't force you to attend church, but I will suggest it. Now let's see if we can get a nurse or an orderly to find you a wheelchair. I saw this nice courtyard outside and I'm pretty sure you'd like to get some fresh air and sunshine."


***


A week had passed and Sunset had been discharged from the hospital. That night she slept in her new bedroom. An old futon served as her bed, two cheap plastic sets of drawers bought from a big box discount national chain store placed side-by-side served as a combination night stand/dresser, on it were placed her phone, a wind-up alarm clock and a few other personal knickknacks. Luna had ordered some actual bedroom furniture for her but it had been delayed in shipping. By the futon sat her wheelchair. In the corner sat propped against the wall was her old half-worn out electric guitar. Fortunately she hadn't lost all feeling below her waist, so she could at least feel when she had to use the bathroom, though her legs were numb and limp as the nerves connecting them to her spinal column had been severed by the bullet.

Sunset drifted through her dreamscape. Images of her learning by the side of the solar princess danced through her dream, followed by images of ponies frolicking in the meadows or flitting through the skies. The dream shifted and she was no longer in Equestria, she stood in front of Canterlot High. She was surrounded by students and teachers. Suddenly fire erupted from nowhere, burning everyone and everything to ash. Out of the flames strode her demon-self, its face was twisted in a cruel sneering smile, its sharp teeth glinting in the flickering light of the flames.

"Such a failure. You could have had it all, but look at you now. Just a worthless cripple bound to a chair and will be nothing but a burden on those around you."

Out of the flames walked Short Fuse, his right hand a strange fusion of flesh and firearm. He raised his right arm and leveled the weird fusion hand at her. The demon drifted to him, cackling as it fused with his body, twisting it into a horrific hell-spawned monstrosity. It spoke in a voice like knives to Sunset's ears. "D̸̡͉̜̭͕͚͔̣̎̀̊͑̇͑̀į̷͎̰̫͎͉̖͉̗̦̥̥̯̱̉̊ę̷̡̜̹̜̻͉̺̙̤̳̞̃͊̐̓̆̾̌̎̚ ̷̩̹̼̫̹̹̱͉͚́͑̑̕͝b̷̛̼̼͓̗̦̓͗̄̋̒̇̾͂̉͛̿̅͘i̵̲̖̩͋͗͐́́̀̈̈͒̆̿̚ț̴̛̳̫̦͈̣̮̍̃̃̾̄͒̉c̷̢̙̐́́̒̋̀̈́͋͒͛͠͝͝h̷̡̛͙̔͂͂́͛̂̎͘͠!̵̫̣̩̻̤̇̚͝" The dream ended with a crack of thunderous sound.

Sunset sat up in bed, sweat coating her body, soaking through her clothes and bed sheets, making her body feel sticky and clammy. Outside thunder rumbled as rain began pattering down on the roof. Pulling the wheelchair over, she clambered onto it, awkwardly wheeling into the hallway and to the bathroom. Switching on the bathroom light, she wheeled over to the sink and turned on the tap. Splashing cold water on her face, she looked in the mirror. "It was just a bad dream! It was just a bad dream! It was just a bad dream!" She repeated the mantra over and over. Hearing the sound of step-thump, she looked over and Luna standing in the door of the bathroom propped up on a crutch, a concerned look on her face.

"Sunset, is everything okay?"

Sunset stared absentmindedly at the stump just below Luna's knee. She realized that the water was still running in the sink. Turning it off, she answered, "Uh, yeah. Just had a bad dream."

Luna hummed thoughtfully. "You sure? There anything I can do?"

Sunset shook her head. "No...uh...no...I'll be okay. It was just a bad dream. I should just go back to bed."

Luna scratched at her chin for a moment. "Come to the kitchen with me. I think there's something that can help with bad dreams."

After both had reached the kitchen, Luna placed a saucepan on the stove, grabbed milk from the fridge and a small box of cocoa powder from the cabinet. Once the milk was warmed up and steaming, she poured it into two mugs and scooped three spoonfuls of cocoa powder into them each. After stirring them up, she placed one mug in front of Sunset. "When Celly and I were little and had a nightmare, mother would make us hot cocoa and have us tell her about the dream." She took a sip of her cocoa. "Celly always makes better cocoa.", she muttered to herself. Clearing her throat, she looked over at Sunset. "So...tell me about your nightmare."

Sunset picked up the mug, feeling the warmth spread through her hands. "I...uh...I'm not sure that this is necessary. It was just a bad dream...y'know...the subconscious trying to make sense of something that doesn't make sense."

Luna shot a small grin at Sunset and took another sip of her cocoa. "Humor me. And don't forget to take a couple of sips of your cocoa before it gets cold."

Sunset grumbled wordlessly under her breath and looked down at the light brown, mostly-milk drink in the white mug in her hands. Lifting the mug to her lips, she took a sip. The chocolaty taste of the cocoa made the corners of her mouth turn up in a small grin, and the warmth of it trickling down her throat and settling in her stomach, making the warmth spread out through the rest of her body made her relax. She told Luna of the nightmare.

"Well now, that was a scary nightmare.", Luna said.

"Stupid isn't it?"

"Quite the opposite. If you didn't have any nightmares after going through such an ordeal, I'd be more concerned.", Luna said thoughtfully. "After the wreck I was in that cost me my leg, I had horrible nightmares for months."

After they had finished drinking their hot cocoa, Luna placed the mugs in the sink and filled them with water to be washed out in the morning.

Luna helped tuck Sunset into bed and kissed her on the forehead. "Now if you have anymore bad dreams, I've got plenty of cocoa to help fight them off."


***


Sunset grumbled as she reached up to switch off the annoyingly ringing alarm clock. Throwing the pillow over her face, she just wanted to go back to sleep.

"~Sunset!~",Luna's sing-songy voice called out, "~Time to get up and get ready for school I've got breakfast cooking!~"

Sunset would have just pretended that she didn't hear Luna and go back to sleep, but the mention of breakfast made her stomach give a gurgling rumble. "Traitor!", she grumbled at her stomach. I simply gurgle-rumbled, almost in response. "Yeah yeah!", she grumbled back at her stomach as she threw off her sheet and blanket. Doing the stretches that she had learned a few days before to keep her legs limber, she prepared to get her day started. Pulling the wheelchair over, she climbed into it. Opening the drawers, she pulled out clothes for the day and made her way to the bathroom. Grabbing a towel from the linen closet, she entered into the bathroom and disrobed. Positioning the wheelchair so she could find an angle to easily and comfortably climb onto the toilet was a bit awkward, but she managed to do it with a little difficulty.

After Sunset had finished on the toilet, she climbed back on the wheelchair and wheeled over to the shower. Looking at the shower chair, it looked more like white plastic bench with aluminum tubes for handles that also served as armrests than a chair. She positioned herself to transfer from the wheelchair to the shower chair. That's when not taking the time to lock the wheelchair's brakes made itself known.

As she shifted her weight forward onto the shower chair, the wheelchair rolled backwards and sent Sunset sprawling onto the plastic bench, then to the floor with several thumps. "Ow! Ow! Dammit! Ow!"

Hearing the sound of a thump from the bathroom, then hearing Sunset shouting in pain made Luna forget what she was doing and hurry across the house. Opening the bathroom door, she saw Sunset  on the floor struggling to sit upright. "Sunset! What happened?! Are you okay?!", she shouted as she hurried over to help the girl out.

"Yeah. I just forgot to lock the damn wheels on the wheelchair.", Sunset said, feeling more frustrated and embarrassed than anything else. "It was just a stupid accident."

Luna helped Sunset up to the shower chair and began checking her over. Fortunately she didn't appear to be hurt other than a bruised cheek. "Well you appear to be okay. Just make sure to lock your wheels in the future."

The sound of the kitchen smoke alarm followed by the scent of smoke made Luna realize that she left breakfast on the stove. "Oh ssssshhhhhhhitake mushrooms!", she shouted rushing out of the bathroom.

Sunset looked to the back of her retreating foster mother, then over to the wheelchair that was sitting on the far side of the bathroom. "I...uh...I got everything from here...I guess." Sliding herself across the shower chair, she closed the shower curtain as best as she could, grabbed the back brush and knocked down the handheld shower head.

Luna had cleared most of the smoke in the kitchen using the fan in the hood over the stove, and with a dish towel and an open window. She looked at the scorched remains that used to be fried eggs. "I guess it's toaster pastries for breakfast then.", she grumbled, fetching the box of foil-wrapped, sugar-frosted, artificially-flavored jam-filled pastries. Not exactly the most nutritious of breakfasts, but it was better than nothing. She hummed a jaunty tune in an attempt to better her mood as she took two of the pastries, placed them into the slots on the toaster and pushed the lever down. The jaunty, mostly-formless tune transformed into a nineteen-fifties show tune from a sappy musical as she walked over to the fridge to get the bottle of juice out. "~Good morning! Good Morning! It's great to stay up late! Good morning to you!~" The tune went back to humming as she placed the bottle of juice on the table. She did an odd skipping dance over to the cabinet to grab down two glasses. The pastries came up from the toaster with a pop. Putting down a plate next to it, she grabbed the two hot pastries and quickly put them down on the plate. "Ow! Ow! Ow!" She quickly rubbed her fingertips together to get rid of the heat, she really should have let them sit for a few minutes to cool before picking them down. Picking up the plate in one hand and carrying the two glasses in the other, she did her little skip dance over to the table, half humming-half singing her little tune.

Luna looked up from what she was doing when she heard the water in the shower turn off and Sunset bumping around in the bathroom. Crap! I forgot to move the wheelchair closer so Sunset could transfer over after she gets done. "Get you head in the game, woman!", she grumbled to herself as she walked across the house, "Sunset's going to need your help to relearn how to gain her independence again."

Luna opened the bathroom door and her eyes shot open in surprise. Sunset had not only finished her shower, but had dried herself off, lowered herself onto the floor, scooted across to her wheelchair, climbed into it and had gotten partially dressed.

Sunset, in her bra and panties, with her hair in a towel turban, was currently pulling a tee-shirt over her head. Popping her head through the neck of the shirt, she saw Luna standing in the bathroom doorway with a smile on her face. "Uh, hi."

"Everything going good?"

Sunset grabbed her pants and unfolded them. "Yep." Bunching up one of the legs of the pants, she looped a hand under her knee, she lifted her leg and slid it into the pant leg, then followed suit with the other pant leg.

Sunset lifted herself up off the wheelchair with one hand as she pulled up the pants with the other. "Let me help you with that.", Luna said stepping over and helped hold her foster daughter up as she got dressed.

Once Sunset was dressed, minus her socks and boots, she looked up at Luna. "So, what's for breakfast."

"Well, it was going to be eggs and bacon, but well...that got kinda burned. So it's toaster pastries, fresh out of the box. I'll give you some money when we get to school so you can go to the cafeteria and get some better breakfast."


***


After getting to school, Sunset wheeled through the hallways to the cafeteria. Though the toaster pastries were better than nothing, being composed mostly of sugar, they didn't last long. She stopped dead in her tracks. There was Rolling Thunder leaning up against the wall. The two girls locked eyes and for a moment Sunset was unsure of what was going to happen next.

For a long moment Sunset Shimmer and Rolling Thunder stared at each other. Tears welled up in Rolling's eyes and she turned hurrying to the restroom.

Sunset sat in the middle of the hallway for a few moments unsure of what to do. Blowing out a sigh, she knew what she had to do, something she wasn't too keen on, but she needed to do it. Gripping the wheels of her chair, she turned around and made her way to the girl's restroom.

"Ouch!"

Sunset felt her chair lurch and immediately knew what had happened, she ran over someone's foot. "I'm sorry. I've not had this chair for very long and am still getting used to it. I didn't mean to run over..." She paused looking into the brown eyes of a green-skinned girl. She wrack her brain, trying to place the name to the face.

Wallflower Blush took a few steps backwards and turned to get away from the former bully, not quite running, not quite walking. She slipped into the crowd of students and disappeared, just another body in the crowd.

Sunset shrugged, though she couldn't quite place the girl's face, she had other things to do and would ask her name later when she saw her again. Wheeling into the restroom, she followed the sound of crying. Reaching up a hand to knock on the stall door, she called out, "Rolling Thunder? I need to talk with you. Could you please come out?"

Rolling Thunder didn't answer, instead bitterly sob behind the stall door.

Sunset let out a small sigh. "I...uh...just...um*ahem*...how are you holding up?"

"It's unfair!", Rolling Thunder half-screamed, half-sobbed.

Sunset was taken off guard. "Uh...um..."

Rolling Thunder unlocked the stall and flung the door open. Her eyes red and puffy from crying, she stared into Sunset's eyes. "We just wanted to kick your ass. At least that's what I wanted to do, the three of us beat you down to send a message, then leave you on the bathroom floor. I didn't realize that he'd go all psycho and try to drown you or choke plant girl out. Lightning and I knew about Fuse's shitty home life,and one of us should have said something, but if you've ever met his dad, he's a scary guy, like really scary. He gave off 'I'll follow you home and murder you in your bed' vibes."

Sunset balked, her mouth felt dry. She didn't know Short Fuse's home life was so bad, just another of her sins laid bare for the world to see. "I deserve this." She slapped her legs. "Maybe worse."

"No!", Rolling said sharply. "You may have been the queen bitch, but nobody, no matter how bad they are or were, deserves to be left crippled, or dead in a box. And that's why it's unfair. If I had said something even just a couple of weeks ago on how bad Short Fuse's home life was, you'd still be able to walk, Short Fuse would still be alive and his dad would be behind bars."

"So where is his dad?", Sunset asked.

"You didn't hear?"

Sunset shook her head no.

Rolling sucked in a shaky breath and blew it out. "The cops had been trying to contact Short Fuse's dad for days after he shot you then himself. The cops kicked in the door to his house after the neighbors complained about a smell. Turns out Fuse had shot his dad that morning before coming to and everything went to shit."

Sunset tried to say something, but words wouldn't come. Her eyes stung as tears welled up.

Rolling Thunder hugged Sunset Shimmer as the two cried.

Lightning Dust went to step into the restroom and froze in her tracks in the doorway. Her hands clenched tightly into fists until her nails dug into her palms. There was Sunset Shimmer hugging the only best friend she had left, Rolling Thunder. Her heart was still aching over the death of Short Fuse and she was still plagued by the nightmares of seeing him put the pistol in his mouth and pull the trigger. She had managed to convince herself that Sunset was responsible for Short Fuse taking his own life, and that girl was currently hugging the only friend she had left. 'She's going to take the only friend you have left!', the dark part of her brain whispered.

With tears stinging her eyes and cheeks, Lightning Dust turned and ran. Going down the hallway as fast as her legs would carry her, the whole time teachers and other faculty shouting at her to stop running in the halls, she barrelled out of the door. Running towards the wooded patch near the back of the school, everything seemed to move by in a blur.

Lightning Dust screamed with all of her might as she punched and kicked a tree until her knuckles were bloody and her feet throbbed in pain.

From a window three girls watched. The first had yellow skin, red hair and brilliant orange eyes, the second had orange skin, purple hair and greyish-purple eyes, the third had white skin, green eyes and pink and purple-swirled hair. They whispered to each other and scribbled something down in their notebooks.


***


Principal Celestia looked through Cozy Glow's file as her "parents" sat in the office with their "daughter". The principal gave a few grunts before closing the new student's file. "Everything appears to be in order here, Mrs. Sunny Glow and Mr. Moon Glow."

'Sunny Glow' gave a broad smile. "That's good to hear, Missus Celestia--"

"It's Miss actually.", Celestia corrected, "I never married, though I prefer being called Principal Celestia."

"Ah. Well I am glad that my daughter here has been able to get enrolled in school.", 'Sunny' said, putting on her best broad, saccharine, phony smile.

'Moon Glow' reached over to pinch his 'daughter's' cheek. "I know it's a bit scary, schmoopy-popkins, moving all the way out here from Bethesda and starting at a new school where you know anybody."

Cozy Glow said nothing,just simply tolled her eyes. 'Dial it back, idiot! Or you'll blow our cover and then Number One will put a bullet in all of our brains.[/]'

Celestia smiled softly, she had been familiar with overprotective patents and their generally average parents. There was something that was off with Cozy Glow. Nothing that was immediately outstanding,just something with her gaze, it belonged to someone older than a "thirteen-and-a-half"-year old girl. She'd snoop in to it later. The last thing she needed right now was a scandal, especially since the school was still under investigation for the shooting.

Cozy Glow's 'parents' had stopped talking. Celestia had never let her mask slip, a skill she had learned long ago when dealing with people she didn't want to see her real emotions. "I'll have Vice-principal Luna show your daughter around the school and escort her to her first class."


***


Cozy Glow had sat down in her first class, eighth-grade literature. She scanned the room, after all decades of training to assess potential threats and potential targets to exploit, especially when the room is filled with eighth-graders.

"Howdy!", a voice drawled from her side.

Cozy coolly looked over to the yellow-skinned, orange-eyed, red-haired girl and gave her best impression of a nervous teenager's smile.

"Th' name's Apple Bloom. What's yers?"
> Gabby Gums sees your sins
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It had been almost a week since Sunset had moved into Luna's home. Still she slept on the futon because the bed Luna had ordered had yet to show up. Every night she had the same nightmare that made her immediately wake up soaked in sweat. And every night she and Luna would sit together in the kitchen and talk about it while sipping on hot cocoa.



***


*rrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnngggggg*

Sunset grumbled to herself as she reached over to switch off the alarm clock. She heard the sounds of frying as Luna sang a jaunty little tune in the kitchen. A heavenly aroma filled the house. "Mmm! Bacon!" Her stomach grumbled and gurgled in response. She patted it. "I know, I know! I'll get you some once I get done peeing, taking a shower and getting dressed."

Sunset did what was quickly becoming her normal morning routine of grabbing each leg one-by-one, lifting it, manually bending it at the knee and bringing the knee up to her chest. She did this a few times for each leg, then she manually bent and straightened each leg.

Once Sunset had finished her shower and getting dressed, she rolled out to the kitchen. Wheeling up to the kitchen table, she sat in an awkward silence as Luna touched the first two fingers of her right hand to her forehead, stomach and both shoulders, making the sign of the cross, then said a small prayer. Once Luna had finished her prayer, Sunset cut slices from the fried eggs to eat, taking bites from the crunchy strips of bacon and crispy wedges of toast.

Luna looked across the table at her foster daughter eating breakfast. "Sunset, do you mind if I ask a question about ponies where you originally came from?"

"Sure!", the fiery-haired girl said around a mouthful of food

"I've seen you eat bacon several times now. Is it normal for ponies to eat meat?"

Sunset swallowed her mouthful of food, took a swallow of juice and wiped her mouth. "Actually it is. Though our diets are largely vegetarian, we still eat eggs. We buy milk and cheese from cows. Many farmers keep pigs to use their waste as fertilizer, and butcher them for their meat and hides. We also eat fish and shellfish."

Luna's head spun for a moment. "Ponies buy milk and cheese from cows?!"

"Yup! Cows are as smart as you or I...well Equestrian cows anyways."

"And your farmers keep pigs for fertilizer, meat and hides?"

"Mmhmm! We use the hides to make leather and parchment. Their fat is used in cooking, and can be rendered down to make a base used in lubricants for machinery and certain inks. Their bones are used to make bone meal."

"What if someone wants a hamburger?"

"Most burgers are made from a mixture of ground pork and hay. I know most of the burgers here are made from cow, but in Equestria, cows are as smart as you and me, so killing one for its meat is both murder and cannibalism. And that's highly illegal."

Luna looked down at her plate as the thoughts of an infamous serial killer cannibal from a few decades ago went through her head. Finding that her appetite had left her, she laid her form on her plate. "I find it weird that ponies eat meat."

"It's not that weird.", Sunset said as she shoved another forkful of egg into her mouth. "Ponies and humans have similar evolutionary histories. Both our species evolved from an omnivorous common ancestor, though with ponies, it was a split-hoofed pony-like ancestor rather than an ape-like ancestor."





It was before the morning bell at Canterlot High. Most of the students were in the cafeteria eating breakfast or milling about in the hallways or the various breezeways chattering with their friends. A few of the students huddled together in the blind spots of the school smoking cigarettes, thinking they were somehow "cool".

Rolling Thunder stepped out of the stall in the girl's restroom. She stepped up to the sink to wash her hands. She took a step back from the sink to look herself over in the mirror. She straightened her collar, made sure her hair was in place, then pulled a tube of black lipstick from inside her jacket pocket.

Lightning Dust limped into the restroom where Rolling was touching up her lipstick. Her eyes were red and puffy. Fresh blood trickled from her knuckles and her feet throbbed with pain. The image of Short Fuse sticking the pistol in his mouth and blowing his brains out played out in her head every time she laid eyes on Sunset Shimmer. And every time that image played out in her mind, she would run away and punch and kick a tree or a wall or whatever as she screamed her voice ragged until her feet throbbed with pain and her knuckles were bloody and raw.  Her hands trembled from a combination of the pain, the damage done to them and the adrenaline burning off.

Lightning felt sick to her stomach as she limped over to a sink. With trembling hands that felt numb from the pain, she clumsily reached for the knob and twisted it, turning on the cold water so she could wash the blood from her hands. Suddenly her stomach felt like it twisted into a pretzel. Grasping the edges of the sink, she began heaving. Only a bit of stomach bile came up as she had eaten nothing that morning.

"Lightning, are you okay?", Rolling Thunder asked.

Lightning Dust watched the mixture of blood, water and stomach bile swirl down the sink drain. She cupped her trembling hands together, gathered water into her palms from the spigot, sucked it into her mouth, swished it around,and spat it into the sink. "M'fine."

"You don't look fine. Did you get in a fight?"

"No."

"Did somebody jump you?"

"No."

"Did you jump somebody?"

"No."

"Then how did your knuckles get busted up?"

Lightning Dust looked down at her bloody knuckles. For the past week she had been kicking and punching trees, walls, lockers and anything else that met her wrath when the image of Short Fuse shooting himself entered her brain, of Sunset hugging Rolling Thunder, her friend...HER FRIEND! It's unfair! IT'S UNFAIR! That bitch gets to LIVE while Fuse rots in the ground?! Tears welled up in her eyes, and for some reason some part of her mind thought it was funny. "Heh. Heh-heh! Heh-heh-heh! Hee-hee-hee! Hoo-hoo-hoo! Hah-hah-hah-hah!" The laughter and the tears pour forth in equal amounts as the memories and images of Sunset Shimmer falling to the floor as a deep crimson stain spread across the front of her shirt, the spray of pink coming from Short Fuse's head a split second after he stuck the pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger, the bright red pool forming around Short Fuse's head as he lay on his back, his glassy, sightless eyes staring up at the sky. She knew she shouldn't be laughing, but when she tried to stop, it just made more pour out, until she was cackling like a hyena. She threw her head back while laughing like a madwoman as tears joined the laughter.

Rolling Thunder took a few steps back. She wasn't sure what to do. She was watching her friend go insane before her very eyes and she didn't know what to do. "Uh...Lightning? Are you sure you're okay? I know I'd be a hundred kinds of fucked up if I saw Fuse shoot Sunset then--"

In that instant the laughing and the tears stopped. The grief and pain receded to reveal bald anger. She snapped around and began stalking towards Rolling Thunder.

Rolling Thunder felt her heart leap into her throat as almost like some flipped a switch, Lightning Dust stopped laughing and crying simultaneously, and quickly turned to face her. Her friend's face was a mask of pain and rage as she stalked forward. Rolling Thunder backpedaled across the tiled floor until her back was touching the white-painted cinder block wall. "Lightning? What's wr--"

"Don't!", Lightning Dust snarled. "Don't! You! Dare! You keep her name out your whore mouth!"

Anger filled Rolling Thunder and she stepped away from the wall to confront Lightning Dust face-to-face. Though Lightning was faster than her, she had a good four inches of height and a solid ten pounds over her. "What the fuck is your deal?!", she snapped as she bellied up to Lightning Dust.

"My deal? My deal?!", Lightning Dust growled through clenched teeth. "I saw you! I saw you with her! Traitor!"

Rolling Thunder blinked. "You saw me with who?"

"I saw you with her! Sluset Shimmer! What are you two now?! Girlfriends?! Fuck buddies?!" Lightning Dust's face turned morose. "You got with her and you forgot about me."

Rolling Thunder stared goggle-eyed at Lightning Dust. Something's bad wrong with her.  "Lightning....you know as well as anybody that I don't date girls. Hell, I don't date boys either. Why didn't you come and talk to me or Sun--urk!"

Lightning Dust grabbed Rolling Thunder by her shirt collar and pinned her to the wall, choking the girl. "I. Told. You. Don't. Say. Her. NNNNNNAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMEEEEEE!"

"Lightning! You're choking me!", Rolling Thunder croaked out.

Lightning Dust pulled Rolling Thunder away from the wall and shoved her across the tiled floor. "Go see Slutset and lick each other's pussies, or finger each other's assholes, or let her whore friends take turns on you, or whatever you sluts like to do! Don't ever talk to me again! I HATE YOU!"

Anger welled up in Rolling Thunder's chest and tears stung her eyes. Everything inside screamed for her to kick the ever loving shit out of Lightning Dust, but they had too much history together for her to take a swing. Something was terribly wrong with her friend and she didn't know what to do. Her hands trembled as tears ran down her cheeks and snot dripped from her nose. "Fine!", she shouted with a barking sob and ran out of the bathroom.

Lightning Dust walked over to one of the sinks so she could finish washing the blood from her hands. As the cold water ran over her hands, the anger began to burn away and the weight of what she had done began to settle in. Placing a hand on the mirror, she looked herself long and hard in the eyes. Anger and rage once again bloomed to life in her head. Only now she wasn't angry at Rolling Thunder, she was angry at the girl in the reflection. Balling up her hand into a fist, she drew it back and threw a punch at the mirror. "Fuck!", she screamed as spider web-like cracks spread across the mirror from under her fist. "Fuck!", she screamed again as she threw a punch with her other hand. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK!", she screamed over and over and over again as she threw punch-after-punch-after-punch-after-punch at the mirror was nothing but broken shards.

Lightning Dust stared down at her trembling hands. Small pieces of broken mirror stuck from the flesh between her knuckles, dark red blood flowed from the wounds and down her fingers, where it dripped off into the sink. Turning on the faucet, she began washing the fresh blood from her hands as she pulled the pieces of broken mirror from her knuckles. Once she finished washing as much blood from her hands as she could, she pulled a green bandanna from her pocket, tore it in half and began wrapping her hands. It would have to do until she could steal some gauze from a first aid kit or the nurse's office to use as a better wrap.

Lightning Dust quickly looked around making sure no one was around or coming before bolting from the restroom.

Scootaloo had been one of the stalls listening, and occasionally peeking out as the events went down. She furiously scribbled what she had seen and heard on a notepad. After it was clear that Lightning Dust was gone, she came out of the stall. She looked at the aftermath of Lightning's mental breakdown, the bloodstains on the sink, the broken shards of mirror laying on the floor and in and on the sink, the pair of bloody knuckle-prints on the wall where the mirror used to be. She scribbled down a few more lines on the notepad before scampering out of the restroom.


***


Scootaloo sat in study hall. This was her free period. She waited for Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom, her friends had the same free period as her. She didn't have to wait long, as first Sweetie Belle, then Apple Bloom, being accompanied by another girl, walked in.

"Hi, Scootaloo.", Sweetie Belle said in a slightly squeaky voice.

"Hiya, Scoots!", Apple Bloom said in a thick drawl.

"Who's this?", Scootaloo asked as she gestured to Cozy Glow.

"This here's my new pal! Her name's Cozy Glow!", Apple Bloom said, draping her arm around Cozy Glow's shoulders. "Cozy Glow, this here's my two bestest friends in the whole world, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle! And together we make up the..."

The three girls took in a deep breath and shouted,"THE CUTIE CRUSADERS! YAY!" They pulled capes that were gold on one side and red on the other, the capes had a shield stitched in the center of the gold side, from their backpacks. The three girls tied the capes around their necks and struck superhero poses as they imitated the sounds of fireworks.

The teacher sitting at the desk by the door shushed them.

"Let's take it outside!", Scootaloo whisper-shouted.

Once outside, the three girls gathered up around Cozy Glow.

"See, Ah toldja that my friends were cool!", Apple Bloom said.

"Gee golly whillakers!", Cozy Glow said in her most convincing and innocent-sounding tone she could muster. "What is it that the Cutie Crusaders do?"

All three girls gave halfhearted murmurs and scratched their heads. Sweetie Belle was the first to speak up. "I like taking pictures, Scootaloo likes creating websites, and Apple Bloom likes writing. So we decided to be..."

All three girls take in big breaths.

"CUTIE CRUSADER JOURNALISTS! YAY!"

Cozy Glow wiggled her fingers in her ears. How could three girls be as loud as a heavy metal concert?

"Oooo! Lookie-lookie, Silver Spoon! It's the flat-chested crusaders!", Diamond Tiara said as she walked up.

Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon snickered.

Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle wrapped their arms around their chests and slumped.

"That's not very nice, Diamond Tiara!", Apple Bloom snapped as she faced the rich girl bully. "Ah talked ta my sister an' she said Ah'd get mine when th' time was right, an' that she was a late bloomer too. Rarity an' Rainbow dash said they was late bloomers too! Ya ain't gotta rub it in our faces that'cha got yer tiddies a'fore us."

"Ooooo! Mi-mi-mi-mi-mi!", Diamond Tiara mocked as she flapped her hand in the imitation of a mouth. "You're just jealous that none of the boys talk to you because you look like a boy."

Cozy Glow steepled her fingers as a wicked smile spread on her lips. I think a perfect opportunity has revealed itself. She stepped up to Diamond Tiara, standing uptight. Though she had the mind of a well trained forty-five year old spy and assassin, she had the body of a fourteen year old girl, which meant that her body looked like it had two years longer of development over the twelve year old girl. "Golly! That's not very nice to say. Especially when compared to me, you look like you've got mosquito bites."

Diamond Tiara's face flushed bright red.

Silver Spoon covered her mouth as she snickered.

The Cutie Crusaders snickered.

Diamond Tiara snapped her head over to Silver Spoon, cutting her friend's snickering off, then back to Cozy Glow. "Why you...that's...but...farfignewton!", she sputtered, which made the Cutie Crusaders and Silver Spoon crack up laughing. Diamond Tiara was not amused in the least bit. "You...you...you...take that back!"

"Make me!"

"Why you!" Diamond Tiara made an improper fist by first laying her thumb across her palm then curled her fingers down over it. She reached back and threw a flailing, limp-wristed "punch".

Cozy Glow grabbed her by the wrist. In a fraction of a second a dozen of different moves ran through her head as her training instincts kicked in, she could break this girl's arm easily in three places, she could flip this girl down onto the pavement and stomp on her head, she could collapse this girl's trachea by punching her in the throat, she could bend this girl's knee backwards and then shatter her jaw by driving her own knee up into it, she could shove the ink pen in her dress' pocket into the girl's eye socket, she could pull one of the pencils in her dress pocket and stab this girl a half dozen times in the lung. Through what all her training and instincts were telling her to do, a voice whispered, a voice that had been ingrained into her from her youngest days of training. 'Don't blow your cover.' She tossed aside all the things she could do to maim, mangle or kill this girl, and instead opted for something that a middle school-aged girl would do. *slap*

Diamond Tiara recoiled from the slap. A bright red handprint formed on her cheek as she stood stunned for a moment. Once her brain caught up that she'd been hit, she brought her hand up to her cheek and felt the hot, slowly rising welt there. "You...you-you-you...hit me!"

Cozy Glow stood defiantly. "Because you tried to hit me." Consider yourself lucky that all I did was slap you. Also, get someone to teach you how to make a fist and throw a punch. If I had let you hit me, you would have broken your thumb.

"NOBODY HITS ME!"

The Curie Crusaders took positions on either side of Cozy Glow. "So what'cha gon' do 'bout it?", Apple Bloom asked.

"I'll tell on you and get you in trouble!"

Cozy Glow pointed at the surveillance camera that had been pointed at their position the whole time. "Do it and you'll get in trouble too."

The Cutie Crusaders "Ooo'd" at that.

"Well I--well I...gah!" Diamond Tiara threw her arms up in frustration, then turned on her heel and stormed off. "Come on, Silvy. We got better things to do than mess around with the boy-chest crusaders and their new 'pal'." She looked over her shoulder as she stormed off with Silver Spoon and glared at Cozy Glow. I'll get you back for this!

After Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon left, the Cutie Crusaders let out a collective sigh.

"That...was...AWESOME!", Scootaloo shouted, making Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle flinch. "You were like a ninja! When she tried to hit you, you were all like, WAH-CHA!...and caught her hand! Then you went, WHAM!...and slapped her on the face!" She waved her hands in a series of chopping motions. "Where'd you learn those sweet moves?"

"Umm...from watching Kung-fu movies and karate videos on UsTube.", Cozy Glow said, trying to sound as innocent as possible. "Golly! You don't think I hurt her, do ya?"

"Nah! Not too bad.", Apple Bloom said. "Mostly jus' her pride. Though she'll be lucky if'n anything tastes right ever again."

"So about the Cutie Crusaders...can I join your club.", Cozy asked as she twisted the toe of her shoe on the pavement.

The crusaders huddled up and whispered. Cozy Glow sat silently as she read their lips, she knew that they had decided to let her join and now they were arguing about what would happen if you dunked a turtle into nuclear waste.

"We've come to a conclusion.", Apple Bloom said. "You get to be a...

*deep breath*

"CUTIE CRUSADER! YAY!", all three shouted.

Sweetie Belle pulled a pencil box out of her backpack and flipped it open. Pulling out a sheet of stickers, she peeled one off that was in the shape of a shield with "CC" in bubble letters on either side of the shield and stuck it to the shoulder of Cozy's dress. "Rarity helped me design these stickers. It will hafta do until we can get you your own cape."

Cozy Glow looked down at the sticker on her dress. She clapped her hands and jumped up and down in place."Ohhh! Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"You're not an official crusader yet, even though we all agree you're in.", Scootaloo said.

Cozy Glow put on the best puppy dog eyes and pouty lip she could muster as she gave a fake sniffle. "I-I'm not?"

"Nope!", Apple Bloom said. "At least not until yer initiation."

"She gets to burst into flames?! I wanna burst into flames!", Scootaloo exclaimed.

"Ah said initiation, not ignition, ya idjit!", Apple Bloom said."Ya know, th' ceremony that makes her an official Cutie Crusader."

"I knew that.", Scootaloo said.

"Did not!", Apple Bloom retorted.

"Did too!"

"Did not!"

"Too!"

"Not!"

The two girls got face-to-face.

"Too-too-too-too-too-too-too!"

"Not-not-not-not-not-not-not-not!"

"Did too times infinity!"

"Did not times infinity plus one!"

Sweetie Belle shoved her way in between Scootaloo and Apple Bloom. "Girls! Let's not fight. Cozy Glow's ini...initi...uh, joining ceremony, remember?"

"So what's this ceremony gonna be like?", Cozy Glow asked. I'm pretty sure it's not going to have booze, cocaine and an orgy.

"It's a secret, wwwwwwwwooooooooo!~", the three girls said in spooky voices as they wiggled their fingers.

"If'n ya can, come by my place tuhnight. We'll have a sleepover in th' Cutie Crusader Clubhouse.", Apple Bloom said.


***


Cozy Glow sat in the back of the car as Underhand, the agent who was posing as her mother drove them to Sweet Apple Acres. "Are you sure I won't need a pistol?"

"They're twelve year old girls, not M-I-six agents or child soldiers. You're going to eat junk food, tell scary stories and watch dumb movies...maybe call and hang up on boys. They're not going to attempt to topple a government, assassinate an elected official or attempt to blackmail a CEO in a honeypot scheme."

"When I was twelve, I had already assassinated two different world leaders and discredited a member of the Russian parliament.", Cozy said as she reached into her rolled up sleeping bag and ran her thumb over the suppressed Beretta's safety.

"Well not all of us were raised in a Specter program, groomed to be a spy and assassin from the time we were three. Most of us had normal...or at least semi-normal childhoods growing." Underhand glanced in the rear view mirror and raised an eyebrow. "You brought a sidearm, didn't you?" She stretched her hand back. "You know the first rule of any deep cover mission."

"Do nothing to compromise the mission and don't blow your cover.", Cozy Glow said with a sigh. She pulled out the pistol and laid it in Underhand's hand.

"Geez! No need to go all James Bond. They're just three twelve year old girls.", Underhand said as she slid the pistol between the seats. "You got any other weapons on you I should know about?"

"Just a stiletto jackknife.", Cozy said. "It's a little memento I took from a Narco about ten years ago who had threatened to drop the dime on a Specter weapons facility in the hopes of getting some leniency on his sentence. The guy had a taste for young girls. The look on his face was priceless when I jammed his own knife into his throat." She put on an innocent act as she batted her eyes, pouted her lip and put an innocent uptick in her voice as she said, "The only reason why I brought the pistol is because the Apple farm sits on the edge of  some dark and scary woods. Gee golly, you don't think there are some dangerous animals that could show up, do ya?" 

"Buh! Don't talk like that around me when we're alone!", Underhand said with a shudder. "And, no. I don't think there's any dangerous animals that will show up this close to the city."

As the car pulled up to the farmhouse, Cozy Glow and Underhand quickly got into character as "daughter" and "mother".

The car pulled to a stop and Cozy Glow got out. Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle ran up to her squealing. The three girls and one secret forty-five year old woman jumped up and down in place as they squealed and giggled and shouted.

Applejack and Big Mac walked over to the driver's side window. "Dun ya worry yer head none, missus Glow. Cozy here'll be safer'n a baby calf in a field of pillows. Ain't that right, Macintosh?"

"Eeyup!"

"Oh, I'm not worried about Cozy Glow. The girl's tougher than she looks. I'm sure she'll be safe and have fun.", Underhand said in her best soccer mom voice.

"C'mon, Cozy Glow!", Apple Bloom said excitedly. "Let's get to th' clubhouse."

Cozy Glow let out a whistle as she looked up at the clubhouse nestled in a three-way fork of an apple tree. It looked like it could be a regular house. "This is your clubhouse?"

Apple Bloom buffed her fingernails on her shirt. "Eeyup! Built it myself."

"Bwah?!"

"Applejack provided me with ev'rything Ah needed. Hammer, nails, saw, screwdriver, screws, planks, buckets o' paint. Took me near on three days ta finish. 'Course Ah cheated a lil. It was her clubhouse first. The joists were still in pretty good shape, ev'rything else was fallin' apart."

"Three days! By herself!", Cozy Glow wheezed as she stared blankly at the clubhouse.

Scootaloo waved her hand in front of Cozy Glow's face. "Apple Bloom, I think you broke her."


***


Cozy Glow had put that Apple Bloom had practically built a clubhouse the size of a studio apartment all by herself in three days on the back burner of her mind, that would have to be tested some other time...if she had the spare time. She was pretending to enjoy herself at the sleepover. The "secret initiation" was nothing more than the girls chanting some nonsense, then proclaiming she was now a Cutie Crusader. Sweetie Belle had presented Cozy Glow with a cape she made herself.

The three girls and Cozy Glow tied the capes around their necks and struck dramatic superhero poses while they made fireworks sounds with their mouth.

Then the feast of soda, s'mores, candy and other tooth-rotting goodness began. After twenty minutes of stuffing her face with s'mores, candy bars, snack cakes, a whole host of hard and soft candies, and washing it all down with soda-after-soda, Cozy Glow began to feel a bit sick. Never in her life had she eaten this much refined sugar and processed flower, she had trained since she was a toddler how to be an assassin and a spy, not stuff her face with candy and soda and snack cakes and all sorts of other junk foods, but she still forced herself to power through it.

"Boom-shaka-laka-shaka-laka!", Scootaloo shouted as she started shaking an unopened soda can.

"Dun ya do it, Scoots!", Apple Bloom said sternly as she shook her finger. "Ah! Ah! Dun!"

Scootaloo continued to chant,"Shaka-laka-laka-shaka-laka-laka!" She grabbed the tab, pulled it and shouted,"BOOM!"

Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle and Cozy Glow dove for cover as sugary, sticky, fizzy, brown liquid sprayed through the air, though it was for naught as they wound up getting sprayed with it.

Apple Bloom tackled Scootaloo to the floor, snatched up an unopened soda can and began shaking it. "Let's see how ya like it!" With a hiss of carbonation, she cracked the shaken up soda can in Scootaloo's face.

Scootaloo opened her mouth as she tried to catch as much of the soda spraying in her face as possible. She only caught a little bit in her mouth.

Cozy Glow broke out in giggling snorts as she pointed at the soda soaked Scootaloo. The sugar high was getting to her. *splat* She wiped off her face and looked down at the remains of a snack cake. She glared at Sweetie Belle who was holding her sides as she guffawed.

"I'm sorry *wheeze* I'm sorry!", Sweetie said between wheezing guffaws. "I was trying to *wheeze* to toss you a cream puff not *wheeze* hit you in the *snort*" Her snort sent her rolling on the floor with a new bout of guffaws.

Sweetie Belle sat up. "I'm sorry Cozy. I didn't--" *splat* A tube-shaped, cream-filled yellow spongy snack cake hit her square on the nose. Cozy Glow had thrown it and was now laughing her ass off.

The clubhouse broke out into a four-way food fight. Snack cakes and marshmallows flew through the air, as shaken up cans of soda sprayed cones of their sticky, sugary, carbonated contents.

The food fight lasted barely twenty minutes before the three girls and Cozy Glow had run out of "ammunition" and the sugar high had burned off. They lay amongst the mess chuckling and panting.

"Welp! Best we start cleanin' up this here mess, a'fore th' ants git in here.", Apple Bloom said.

"Aw man!", Scootaloo griped.

Sweetie Belle sang a happy tune in her bell-like voice as the crusaders began cleaning up the mess they'd made. Fortunately there had been a spigot with a water hose outside the clubhouse. Apple Bloom used it to wash the sticky stuff off of the walls and floor, and out the trap door concealed in the floor. The three girls and Cozy Glow stepped out of the clubhouse and each took turns washing the stickiness out of their hair and from their faces with the water hose.

Once everything had dried up, the girls and Cozy glow went back inside and grabbed their sleeping bags. Cozy Glow had forgotten that she had hidden the switchblade in her sleeping bag and it fell out, clattering on the floor when she unrolled it.

Scootaloo quickly snatched up the switchblade. When Cozy Glow tried to take it back, she snatched away. Pressing the button to make the blade flip out with a spring loaded *snik!* She exclaimed with wide, glittering eyes, "Oh cool! It'sjust like from that biker movie, 'Rebel without a Clue'!" She began making stabbing motions in the air. "Take that ya filthy coppers!", she said imitating the main character.

"Give that back!", Cozy Glow snapped. "It's not a toy!"

"Scoots, you shouldn't play with knives. Big Mac taught me that knives are dangerous tools an' someone could get hurt if'n you play with'em. Give Cozy back her knife."

Scootaloo gave a huff. "Fine, ya sissies!" She pressed the button on the handle and was shocked when it didn't close. "Wait...how do I...it always works like this in the movies."

*knock-knock-knock*

The door to the clubhouse swung open and Applejack stepped in. "Jus' checkin' in on ya girl ta see how y'all're--Scootaloo! Where in tarnation didja get a jackknife?! Give it here a'for ya cut yer cockamamie fingers off!" She quickly forward and plucked the knife from Scootaloo's hand.

"It fell out of Cozy's sleeping bag.", Scootaloo said meekly.

Applejack pushed the blade lock down on the switchblade and folded the knife shut. "Cozy Glow, is that true? You had this here weapon in yer sleepin' bag?"

Cozy Glow put her hands behind her back, twisted the tips of her toes back and forth on the floor, and gave the puppy dog eyes. "Uh-huh. I had forgotten that I had put it in my sleeping bag, and when I opened it, it sorta...fell out. Golly gee! I didn't mean for nobody to get in trouble!"

"An' where'd you get this knife?", Applejack asked as she shoved the switchblade into her hatband.

"It was my grandfather's. He was a soldier in the war. He was very brave. Daddy gave it to me. He told me to keep it safe and that it might one day save my life."

Applejack mused on Cozy's story. Though her story made sense, there was a niggling doubt scratching at the back of her mind. Every instinct was saying that there was more to little miss Glow's story, but she didn't have anything to disprove it, so she decided to drop it. "Nobody was hurt, so ain't nobody in trouble. Ah'll hang on to this fer tonight, 'cause th' last thing we need is one o' you girls loppin' off a finger or two." She looked straight at Scootaloo at that last part. "Other'n Scoots playin' with a knife, looks like ev'rybody's doin' pretty good. So Ah'll let y'all get back ta yer slumber party. AN' dun worry yer head none, Cozy. Ah'll give ya yer knife back in th' mornin'." With that she left, softly closing the door behind her.

"Whew!", Scootaloo exclaimed as she wiped her brow with the back of her hand. "I thought I was in deep doo-doo."

"Just be glad we cleaned up a'fore the knife fell out of Cozy's sleepin' bag.", Apple Bloom said. "We'd'a been up Schitt's Creek without a paddle."

"Huh?", Scootaloo and Sweetie Belles said simultaneously.

"Jus' somethin' Ah heard Applejack an' Big Mac say. They said Schitt was a man who owned a creek that was dangerous ta go on without a paddle.", Apple Bloom explained.

"Makes sense to me.", Sweetie Belle said. "It's a shame that Mr. Schitt had such a dangerous creek. So what do you girls want to do now?"

"Didn't you girls say you wanted to be journalists?", Cozy Glow asked.

"Yeah!", the three girls said.

"Ah took down some notes o' th' things Ah saw folks doin' and what they were talkin' 'bout.", Apple Bloom said.

"Me too!", Scootaloo exclaimed. "I even got some juicy notes from when I heard Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder having a fight."

"Why don't you two take your notes out so we can see and compare them?", Cozy Glow asked.

Scootaloo and Apple Bloom took their notepads out of their bags.

"You've got some good stuff here.", Cozy Glow said after she flipped through the pages. She paid special attention to the notes taken about Lightning Dust. This girl's got some raw talent and a high pain tolerance. I bet with a little post-hypnotic suggestion and some brainwashing, she could make the perfect unaware sleeper agent. "Did any of you girls get any good photos or videos?"

"I got a funny video of the janitor.", Sweetie Belle said with a snicker. "He was washing the wall where someone had thrown up. It kinda looks like he's peeing! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ah!" She clutched her sides as she rolled on the floor laughing.

"Really?! Lemme see!", Scootaloo excitedly shouted.

Sweetie Belle took her phone out of her bag and pulled the video up. All three girls gathered around the phone.

"OH MY GAWD!", Apple Bloom shouted. "It does look like he's peein'!"

"Looks like you've got a full bladder buddy. Just peeing all over that wall!", Scootaloo exclaimed. "Cozy! You gotta see this!" She turned the phone around so that Cozy Glow could see.

Cozy Glow gave a chuckle. The janitor was spraying down the wall with a hose and from the angle it was shot at, it looked a little like he was peeing.

Scootaloo and Apple Bloom pulled out their phones and began flipping through the videos they'd shot.

With the girls momentarily distracted, Cozy Glow steepled her fingers as a malicious thought began running through her mind. I could use these girls to gather information on everyone at the school and find out what caused the massive EMP spikes. I'll help them set up a slam page that airs everyone's dirty little secrets to keep the kids distracted, and when the time comes, I'll grab whatever caused the spikes. The best part is that there's no need to cause any chaos personally, just tweak the teenage rumor mill a little.

"Oh my god, Apple Bloom! You got a video of Ditzy accidentally trashing the art room?!", Scootaloo shouted. "Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Look at all that paint and all that pottery fly! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

Oh,this is going to be easier than I thought. "Scootaloo. You said you like making websites?", Cozy asked.

"Yeah. I made the official Rainbow Dash fan page. She's so cool!"

"How about we make an unofficial school news site? We can create a MyStable, Faceplace, Skwakr and Diddit accounts for it, and post up the latest so the students can find the site easier." Since the advent of the internet, it made her job much easier. This was going to be a cakewalk, she wasn't going to use her manipulation and subterfuge skills to tear down a multi-billion, multi-national corporation, or cause chaos and anarchy in a nation, she was going to use her skills to pit a whole bunch of hormone-addled teenagers against one another. And the best part, those three girls were going to be her unaware accomplices and unknowing fall guys if things went sour. "Sweetie Belle, you're really good at taking pictures and videos, right?"

Sweetie Belle nodded her head. "Yeah. But why would we make a school news site when the school already has one?"

"This isn't going to be an official school news site. We'll let the official one talk about things like the sports teams, the various clubs, upcoming events and the like. What this site will do is talk about the things that the official school news site doesn't consider newsworthy."

"You mean things like who's dating who, or what people are wearing?", Sweetie asked.

"Booooorrrrrr-ring!", Scootaloo said with gusto. "We can do articles about people getting into fights. Have videos of people falling down, like that video of Ditzy accidentally trashing the art room."

"Ah dunno.", Apple Bloom said. "Ah dun wanna do nuthin' that will hurt people."

"We could videos of people picking their noses or scratching their butts! Ewww!", Sweetie Belle said as she kicked her feet.

"Yeah Yeah! We can do video of people's pants falling down, showing everyone their underwear!", Scootaloo said full of excitement.

"And we can have articles of spooky, scary and weird stuff. Things like any ghosts, demons, werewolves and strange lights seen at the school.", Cozy Glow added.

"Ooooo! Spooky fun!", Sweetie Belle said.

"So how're we gonna do this without gettin' caught?", Apple Bloom asked.

"Easy!", Scootaloo chimed in. "I can make the designs of the website on my laptop, then transfer it onto a thumb drive. Then I can upload the designs to a domain from a computer in the school library or computer lab."

"That's a little easy to get caught, don't'cha think?", Cozy asked. "I mean it's not like you can sneak in and use the computers there without someone noticing."

"Yeah!", Apple Bloom said. "We can use th' computers at th' public library an' at coffee shops. An' we can't get in trouble with th' principals or teachers 'cause we won't be at school when we do it."

"Who's the best at editing photos and videos?", Cozy Glow asked.

"That'd be me.", Scootaloo said.

"And who's the best at creative writing?", Cozy asked.

"Yo!", said Apple Bloom.

"Excellent!", Cozy Glow said softly. "Now we just need a name for the site.", she said louder.

"How about Anon-A-Miss?", Sweetie asked.

"Nah! We'd be copying the folks who hang out on four-chin.", Scootaloo said. "How about Peeping Eye?"

"No. That makes us sound like perverts.", Apple Bloom said. "Hmm!" She taped her chin in thought. "I've got it! We call the site Gabby Gums!"

"Ooo! I like it!", Sweetie said excitedly.

"Gabby Gums it is!", Scootaloo said. "We've got all weekend to get it set up." She pulled the laptop out of her bag and began working.

As all three girls gathered around Scootaloo's laptop, Cozy Glow pulled out her phone and sent a message through the Specter app to the agents posing as her parents.



 BBYDLL: Found a potential student who might be a candidate for post-hypnotic programming and brainwashing. Her name is Lightning Dust. She exhibits a high pain tolerance and is an athlete. Her mental trauma might make it easier to break her down and build her up again.

NDRHND: Will keep an eye on her and track her motions. Besides her pain tolerance and trauma, why do you consider her a candidate for the marionette program?

BBYDLL: In the event I need muscle to acquire information or to cause mayhem in the event my cover gets blown. Plus we can milk her for information. In the event we wind up not having any use for her, we can program a self-terminate protocol. She'll just be another teenage suicide statistic.

BCKSTB: Will keep a watch out for her and upon your order, we'll nab her. 



Cozy Glow closed the Specter app on her phone. Underhand was always cautious, maybe a bit overly cautious. But being overly cautious was sometimes a good thing and Cozy trusted Underhand's instincts. Back-stab was a perfect shadow. He could disappear into a crowd, completely melt into any persona until his personality was  unrecognizable from the persona that served as his front. Plus he had no qualms about killing or abducting anyone, regardless of age, status or title.


***THREE DAYS LATER***


The Gabby Gums website went live on Sunday afternoon. A smattering of edited videos and pictures had been uploaded onto it. Alerts went out across the social media pages created to boost its popularity.

Monday morning rolled around and students were already sharing links to videos and pictures that had been posted up on Gabby Gums. They laughed at the heavily edited video that made the janitor look like he was peeing on a wall, complete with yellow stream.

Ditzy walked through the halls of the school. Students holding up their phones snickered and laughed as she walked past. The grey-skinned, blonde-haired, golden-eyed girl raised an eyebrow as she walked past. The students whispered and snickered as she continued walking past. Their snickering and whispering was accompanied with them pointing their phone's cameras at her began to annoy her. She turned to face a small group of them, three boys, Hoops, Dumb-Bell and Score. "What's your--woop!" He feet got tangled up with each other and she fell, face-planting on the floor.

As Ditzy  lifted her head up from the floor, blood trickling from her nose, Dumb-Bell jumped forward, phone in his hands, it was clear he was filming her. "Epic ffffffaaaaaiiiiiiilllll!", he shouted. "Yo, dudes! Did you get that?", he shouted to Score and Hoops as the three ran off.

Sunset rolled up and reached a hand down to help Ditzy up. A dour look was on her face.

"Wh-what's going on? Why's everyone laughing at me?", Ditzy asked as she rose to her feet.

Sunset blew out a sigh."Ditzy...there's a new website that went up this weekend. It has a bunch of videos and pictures of people...well I think it's better if I show you." She flipped her phone around to show Ditzy the video and pressed the play button.

The video showed Ditzy walking into the art room as dopey music played. When the video showed her tripping and accidentally knocking over, air horns blew as a deep, echoing voice shouted,"EPIC FAIL!", accompanied by big, bold, flashing letters saying the same.

"It's not my fault! It's not my fault!", Ditzy cried.

Sunset looked around the hall and scowled at the snickering students who were holding out their phones, hoping to catch another video of Ditzy falling. "Come on. Let's go somewhere where there's not so many assholes around."

Sunset and Ditzy made their way to the concrete picnic tables near the rear of the school.

Ditzy flopped down on the bench and buried her face in her hands. "It's not my fault!"

"I know, Ditzy. I know.", Sunset said as she laid her hand on the distraught girl's shoulder.

"It's not my fault! I have a neurological disorder. It screws up my eyes and robs me of my depth perception. It makes it so that I have trouble knowing where my arms and legs are, and sometimes I have the weird seizures where my arms and legs go wild."

Sunset was momentarily stricken silent. "I'm such a bitch.", she said with a sigh. "Ditzy, I want to apologize to you. For nearly three years I made fun of you because I thought you were clueless and clumsy. I called you such mean names and the whole time you did nothing but smile back."

"It's okay.", Ditzy said, patting Sunset on her knee. She realized what she had done and recoiled her hand."I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean to...I mean--"

"It's okay.", Sunset said cutting Ditzy off. "You didn't mean anything by it."

"But-but your legs--"

"Are numb, not diseased." Sunset slapped her thigh to demonstrate. "See? Can't feel a thing."

"H-how far are you...ya know?"

"From my hips down. Don't worry, I don't need a diaper or a catheter or whatnot. I can feel when I need to go."

"Well...that's good...I guess."


***


Wednesday rolled around and Gabby Gums was still rolling strong.

Principal Celestia was walking through the hallway. Students began whispering chants of, "Cake! Cake! Cake!", from behind after she passed. She raised an eyebrow at the whispered chanting, but otherwise gave no indication that she heard them or even cared, over the years as an educator, she had experience many of the boys...and a few of the girls, whispering lewd comments as she passed. Teenagers with raging hormones and still developing minds hadn't learned the finer points of checking out someone subtly. Turning a corner where there were no students, she stopped and ran her hands across her backside. "Maybe I have plumped out a little. I'm not a spring chicken anymore."

As Celestia walked up to her office door, two students came walking out. One whispered to the other,"You think she'll like them?" "You know she likes it and maybe it'll keep us out of detention.", the other whispered back.

Celestia raised an eyebrow at that. Walking into her office, she paused. There sitting on her desk were two boxes, one white, the other pink, they looked like pastry boxes. Lifting the lid on the pink box, she stared at the deep, dark brown frosting on a cake. A German chocolate cake to be exact. "Huh! Why would a student bring me a whole cake?" She lifted the lid of the white box. A cake with pale yellowish-white frosting sat in the box with pecan halves decorating the edges. She dipped a finger into the frosting and tasted it. Buttercream frosting. She pushed some of the frosting aside to look at the pastry beneath the frosting. Her suspicions were confirmed, red velvet cake. She made the sign of the cross. "Thank you Jesus for your blessings. Now to figure out why those two brought me cakes."

Luna stepped into Celestia's office.

"Luna, look at this. Two students brought me cakes. The quandary is why."

Luna pulled the phone out of her pocket. "Celly, I think I've got the solution to your mystery. This weekend someone from this school created a new website called Gabby Gums."

"So? Students make websites all the time. Lemme guess, it's a 'bring the principal cakes' website."

"Not quite.", Luna pulled up the site and clicked on the link for the picture. It showed Celestia sitting at the teacher's table, she was holding a slice of cake in her hand, bringing it up to her mouth to take a bite, the caption read,"Principal Celestia really likes her cake!", in bold, blocky white all caps letters.

Celestia chuckled."So somebody took a picture of me at lunch going ham on a piece of cake and now some students are pranking me by bringing me cake. Big deal. This'll blow over when a video of a cute kitten sneezes in a funny way pops or someone comes up with another silly dance on ClipClop."

"It's not like that, Celly.", Luna said. She clicked on other links, some led to pictures done up in meme formats, some had ridiculous captions, others had mean captions. Some of the links led to videos of students having awkward and inconvenient things happen to them. "There's also articles on here, some of them are accusing students of cheating on tests, or their boyfriends or girlfriends. Others are saying really really mean rumors about some of the students or airing their dirty laundry. This site has already sparked a few fights and some new rounds of bullying. There are even heavily edited pictures and videos of some of the faculty making them look like they're doing...inappropriate things."

Celestia pursed her lips in thought. "Let's keep an eye on this website. If it lasts longer than to the end of next week, or any bullying inspired by it really ramps up, I'll call in a favor to track them down. Then we'll deal with whichever students are behind it."

"I'll ask the staff who oversees the computer lab to check the site's IP address. If nothing else, we can figure out where they're uploading from and then move forward from there.", Luna said.

Rainbow was in the locker room stripping out of her athletic gear. Soccer practice was over. The drying sweat clinging to her skin made her feel gross and she wanted nothing more than to get a shower. Several of the girls were in various stages of undress. Some of them were looking at their phones and snickering. "Are you guys on that Gabby Gums website again? Yeah, a few of the pictures and videos on there are funny, but most are just mean. C'mon guys, you're better than that."

"This article has you in it.", Fleetfoot said.

"Oh really? I bet it talks about how awesome I am!"

"Not really.", Spitfire said. "you might want to read this. It's kinda messed up."

Rainbow Dash pulled her phone out of her bag and pulled up the site. She quickly found the article. Above the headline it had photos of the heads of her, Fluttershy, Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Sunset Shimmer, Rolling Thunder, and Lightning Dust. She read the article.



 
Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder friendship over? Lover's quarrel? Breakup? Cheating? Lesbian orgy?


I, Gabby Gums, recently came across the news about a quarrel between Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder. According to reliable witnesses, Lightning Dust accused Rolling Thunder of having sexual relations with the former(?) bully, Sunset Shimmer and her new friends, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie Pie and Applejack. Is there any truth to these accusations? Has Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder broken up? Did Rolling Thunder cheat on her ex-girlfriend?
 



Rainbow Dash read the article, closed the page, clicked her phone off and tossed it in her bag. "Uncool."

"So, is it true? Are you having nasty seven-way orgies with your friends and Rolling Thunder?", Gilda asked as she pulled her jersey off.

"What?! No!"

"What about you and Sunset Shimmer? I bet you've got a thing for cripples.", Mist Fly said with a half-snicker.

"No way, man! Did you all forget that until after what happened at the formal, Sunset was a total C-U-Next-Tuesday?", Rainbow said. "Is she hot? Yes. Would I fuck her? No. Because I don't see her that way."

"I bet you're totally a cripple crusher.", Misty Fly said. "I bet you're all, 'Oh Sunset! Let's do it in your wheelchair! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah!'" She turned her back on Rainbow as she made kissy sounds, running her hands up and down her sides.

The other girls began laughing.

"No way! Misty Fly, you're taking it too far!", Rainbow snapped.

"Relax, bish! Don't get your ovaries twisted in a knot. I'm just joshing you.", Misty Fly said. "We all know you've got eyes for Applejack."

Rainbow's cheeks turned rosy."Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-aaaaaaaaaaaaat?! Naw!"

"Oh yeah! You totally do!", Gilda said. "You wanna smash that apple so hard that applesauce comes out."

Rainbow's face felt like it was on fire. She sputtered as her brain forgot how to form words.

"What. The. FUCK!", Rolling Thunder's voice shouted from outside.

"Oh shit!", Gilda said.


***


Friday rolled around and the school was abuzz about the latest things on Gabby Gums. Some students bickered about their dirty laundry, one accusing the other of being Gabby Gums, or talking to them, spilling their secrets. Some students mocked and bullied other students because of some embarrassing picture or video. A few students got into fist fights over what was posted upon the site. Copycat sites started to pop up, created by other students.

Over at Crystal Prep Academy, a lavender-skinned student wiped the tears from her eyes. Someone had secretly taken a picture of her while she was changing in the locker room in just her granny panties and beige bra and posted it up on one of the Gabby Gums copycat sites along with her cellphone number. Almost immediately she began receiving lewd messages from guys asking for nude pictures, or sending unsubtle innuendo-laden messages...more than a few sent her lewd pictures of their parts. She had always had trouble in social situations that made it hard for her to make friends. This new set of unwanted harassment drove a wedge further between her and her fellow students. Tomorrow she'd get a new phone and number. In it would be the only numbers she could trust, her parents, her brother and her former babysitter. From inside her backpack came a yip. Unzipping the backpack, she revealed a small purple dog with light green ears and underbelly, a darker green fluff of hair atop its head, and light purpleish-grey spots on its barrel. She let the dog leap out of her backpack and began scratching its ears. She giggled when the dog kicked its hind legs as she scratched its hindquarters."Oh Spike, you're the best friends a girl can have!"

Cozy Glow strode through the hallways of Canterlot High. The chaos was building and had reached the point where it was palpable. The whole social setting at the school was reaching a volatile state, it wouldn't be long until all it needed was a single spark to set the whole place off, and she was holding the metaphorical box of matches. Today was not the day she set the social setting of the school ablaze, no, she had another task occupying her focus. It was reaching the end of the school day and she was a predator setting its ambush for a very specific prey.

Lightning Dust sat in a stall in the girl's restroom. She peeled the old gauze off of her hands. Her knuckles were still bloody and raw. They would have already begun healing if she would stop punching hard things, but she couldn't make herself stop, the pain of punching trees, walls and lockers was the only thing that kept the horrible images of her friend taking his life pushed down. She had started wearing shirts that were a few sizes too big so she could use the long sleeves to hide her hands. She had pulled away from all her social groups, and even stopped going to soccer practice. She gave a halfhearted chuckle as she flexed her fingers, in spots she swore she could see the muscle. She pulled a tube of antibiotic ointment and a couple sealed packs of sterile gauze she had stolen from the nurse's office out of her pocket. Screwing the lid off the ointment squeezed a dollop onto the bloody knuckles of her right hand, tearing open the gauze packet, she used the gauze to smear the ointment over her raw knuckles, then wrapped her hand with the gauze. She then did the same process for her left hand.

Once she was finished wrapping her hands, Lightning Dust screwed the cap back on the tube of ointment and stuffed it back into her pocket. She gathered up the bloody gauze and the empty gauze packets. Walking to the trashcan, she stuffed the bloody gauze and the empty packets down inside so nobody would accidentally see them. Pulling her overlong sleeves down over her hands, she loitered in the restroom awaiting the final bell so that she could disappear into the crowd and slip out of the school. The phone in her pocket chirped, it was probably Rainbow Dash, or Spitfire, or someone else from the soccer team texting her. She didn't bother to pull it out to even see who it was, in fact she had stopped answering texts all together. She didn't know why she kept her phone.

*bbbbrrrrriiiiinnnnngggggg*

The final bell rang and students filled the hallway. Lightning Dust slipped out of the restroom and into the crowd. Outside Cozy Glow was already waiting for her.

Lightning Dust sauntered through the parking lot. She set out on her winding path back home. Cozy Glow walked up beside her.

"Beat it, kid."

Cozy Glow put on the vulnerable routine. "Daddy's working out of town and mamma's car broke down."

"Don't see how that's my problem."

"I gotta walk home all by myself, and I don't wanna walk alone. It's scary walking home alone."

"Why don't you get one of your friend's parents to drive you home?"

"They all live far away on the other side of town and b'sides, they've got things they've gotta be at."

"So take the bus."

"I don't got no money."

"So what do ya want me to do?"

"Walk with me to my house. I only live a few blocks away from you."

"No."

Cozy Glow applied the puppy dog eyes and pouty lip. "Pleeeeeeeaaaaaassssse?"

Lightning Dust crumbled before the ultimate weapon of every little kid."Rrrrr! Fine! Keep up. You fall behind, I'll leave your narrow ass behind. Hope you don't wind up on a milk carton."

Cozy Glow gave an innocent-looking smile, but her eyes glinted with malicious glee. Hook, line, and sinker. She reached into her dress' pocket where her phone was. The Specter app was running, she gave the screen a tap to signal the two operatives posing as her parents that she was on the way with the quarry. She passed her thumb over the switchblade in her pocket. Her phone vibrated signaling that they'd received the message.

As Cozy Glow walked a little ahead of her, Lightning Dust noticed that there was an increasing number of empty lots. "Hey, uh...kid? Are you sure you know where you're going?"

"Yep!", Cozy Glow chirped over her shoulder. "This is a shortcut. We'll be there before you know it."

Lightning Dust looked around at the increasingly desolate area. "Uh...if ya say so kid." How many times has she walked this way before? This is the perfect area for some pedo to snatch someone.

After twenty more minutes of walking, Cozy Glow decided that this was the perfect place to capture her prey. She reached into her pocket and double taped the screen on her, signaling her fellow agents to initiate the snatch-and-grab. She intentionally stumbled and fell to the ground. "Ow! Ow! Owie!"

Lightning Dust rushed up to Cozy Glow and knelt down. "You okay?"

Cozy Glow wiped the back of her arm across her nose as she fake sniffled. "My-my ankle hurts!"

"Did you twist it?"

"I *sniff* I don't know.", Cozy Glow said with a fake whimper.

Lightning Dust checked over Cozy Glow's ankle. "There doesn't seem to be any swelling. Let's get you up and see if you can put any weight on it."

As Lightning Dust pulled Cozy Glow up to her feet, a plain white windowless van pulled up. When Lightning turned to face the van, Cozy kicked the girl in the back of her knee, making it buckle.

"What are y--ack!", Lightning Dust tried to say, but a pair of arms wrapped around her neck, locking her in a choke hold and cutting her words off.

Lightning Dust struggled in the choke hold and began working on prying Cozy Glow's arm from around her neck. Cozy Glow moved one arm away from the struggling teen's neck. Lightning Dust began working on prying what she thought was a twelve year old girl's arm from her neck as she worked to plant her feet under her.

*snick*

Lightning Dust's blood ran cold when she saw the silvery gleam of the stiletto jackknife's narrow blade's point pointing at the corner of her right eye.

"Don't you struggle too much,little girl.", Cozy Glow said in a voice that was too mature for her petite body and apparent-looking youth. "I'd hate to have to carve up such spirited potential."

A shudder went down Lightning Dust's spine.

The rear doors of the white van flew open and Back-stab jumped out, wearing black sweat pants, an oversized black hoodie and a black balaklava. He pulled a syringe from inside his hoodie pocket, popped the cover off the needle, thumped the side of the syringe filled with a brownish clear and pushed the plunger in slightly, pushing the air bubbles out, along with a small portion of the liquid.

Lightning Dust's eyes became pinpricks at the sight of the syringe. Oh no! I'm about to be kidnapped and sold off like in the movie 'Took'! She began her struggle anew in earnest.

"Ah-ah-ah!", Cozy scolded as she pressed the point of the switchblade against the side of Lightning's neck. "You just calm down. One little pinch and it'll be bedy-bye time!"

Back-stab grabbed Lightning Dust's wrist, pulling the struggling girl's arm straight and shoved the needle into a vein in the crook of her elbow.

Lightning felt the stinging pinch of the needle as it pierced the vein in the crook of her elbow. It felt like freezing fire in her veins as the drug rushed thin. After several seconds her arm felt cold as she lost feeling in it. She felt dizzy and grey static filled the edges of her vision.

Cozy Glow let go of Lightning Dust, folded up the switchblade and stuck it in her dress pocket.

Lightning Dust tried to get up, but her arms and legs could only flop like they were wet noodles. "Bluh." She tried to speak, tried to yell for help, but only a single nonsensical sound came out with drool. Her vision filled with grey static. She felt so heavy, so sleepy. Darkness.

Back-stab zip-tied Lightning Dust's ankles together, zip-tied her wrists behind her back and slipped a heavy black bag over her head. He lifted the drugged, unconscious girl off the ground and carried her into the back of the white van. Cozy Glow stepped in behind him and pulled the doors shut. The van pulled calmly away.


***


Lightning Dust awoke to a sharp pinching sensation in her arm, followed by a warm, spreading sensation through her veins. When she tried to pull away, there was a sharp biting sensation at her wrist. Blinking the blurriness from her eyes, she looked around. She was sitting in a wooden chair, her wrists were held by some strange white bands to the arms. Looking around, she saw she was in a small grey room. "Wha..."

"Don't try to speak just yet.", A woman said as she walked over. Lightning Dust recognized her as Cozy Glow's mother. The woman pulled a penlight from a pocket and began shining it into the teen's eyes. "Just sit there and be still. Let the counter agent do its work. I know you're scared, but once this is over, you'll remember having a fun time raising hell all over town with some bad girls." The woman began moving the penlight around. "Alright, just follow this with your eyes and let me know if you experience any lightheartedness or nausea."

"P-please don't hurt me!", Lightning Dust whimpered as tears welled up in her eyes. "J-just let me go! I pr-promise I won't say anything! I-I want to see my mamma! I want daddy!"

"Shh! It's okay, dearie.", the woman said as she patted Lightning Dust on the shoulder. "We know you won't say anything. Like I said, when we're through, this weekend will just be a memory of you drinking and doing drugs with some bad girls. Now just sit back and relax. It'll make things go easier. Okay?"

Tears and snot ran down Lightning Dust's face. "Mm-hmm!", she whimpered between sobs.

Underhand stood up from where she was examining Lightning Dust and walked over to Cozy Glow and Back-stab. "She's recovered enough from the sedative. Other than being scared out of her wits, she's ready to begin."

Underhand began applying electrodes to Lightning Dust's head. Back-stab wrapped a pair of black rubber bands around the girl's head, above and below her eyes, and attached two pairs of blunt copper hooks above and below her eyes. He then slipped the blunt copper hooks under her eyelids and adjusted the straps so she couldn't close her eyes.

Lightning Dust's heart pounded in her chest as she began to hyperventilate. This is just like that scene in 'A Steampunk Apple'! "Wh-what's going on? What are you doing to me?"

Cozy Glow walked over holding a bottle of saline solution and patted Lightning Dust on the cheek. "Just the first step in your reprogramming."

Underhand placed sound cancelling headphones over Lightning Dust's ears as Back-stab set up projector screens in a semicircle in front of the girl. Projectors began playing on the screens images of patterns of swirling colors as strange, distorted music began playing through the headphones. Cozy Glow would occasionally squirt some of the saline solution into Lightning Dust's eyes to keep them from drying out. Occasionally the images on the screens would flicker and the patterns would change, not giving the girl's mind a chance to adapt.

After two hours, two small LED lights were attached to the blunt hooks keeping Lightning's eyes open and they began strobing in odd patterns into each eye.


***4 HOURS LATER***


Underhand looked at the EEG reading on the computer screen. "She's ready for phase two."

The projectors were switched off. The strobing LED lights, blunt hooks and head straps were removed from Lightning Dust. The headphones were left on her head. The girl slumped listlessly in the chair.

An IV stand was wheeled up next to Lightning Dust. A bag of saline solution was hung from the IV stand, a tube was hooked to the bag and a small needle, the needle was then pushed into a vein in the crook of her elbow.

Underhand pulled back a headphone from Lightning Dust's ear. "If you feel like you need to go to the bathroom, just let it go. No one here will judge you." She placed the headphone back.

A VR headset was placed on Lightning Dust's head. A cocktail of uppers and adrenaline boosters mixed with a mild psychotropic compound were injected into the saline solution bag to keep her awake and to make her mind more malleable. Once it became clear that the drugs were starting to take effect, the VR display was flipped down and turned on. Flickering, colored light could be seen at the edge of the display. White noise and distorted voices played through the headphones.

Lightning Dust's eyes danced across the VR display as her hypnotized and drug-addled mind tried to make sense of everything. Bizarre images flickered across the display in two-dee and three-dee, interspersed with strobic imagery and subliminal messages.

Every two hours a new bag of saline solution was hung on the IV stand, attached to the tube hooked into Lightning's vein and more of the cocktail injected.


***12 HOURS LATER***


Lightning Dust was a mess. The cocktail of uppers, adrenaline boosters and the psychotropic compound made it so that she didn't know what was going on. Her whole world was a chaotic mess of distorted voices, white noise and bizarre strobing imagery. In her pants and on the wooden chair was a dark, drying stain that reeked of ammonia and uric acid.

Cozy Glow, Underhand and Back-stab had spent the last four hours slurping coffee and popping caffeine pills. Underhand looked at the EEG readout on the screen."Alright, she's ready for interrogation."

Cozy Glow hooked up a microphone to the computer. She checked the levels on the mic. "We'll give her a minute to adjust before I start asking her questions." She clicked a program on the computer.

Lightning Dust slumped back in the chair as the sound of gently blowing wind, accompanied by chirping birds played over the head phones and the image of a gently rolling meadow was projected over the VR display.

Cozy Glow moved the mic up to her mouth. "Lightning Dust, what happened on the night of the night of September the twentieth?"

"Fire. Angry eyes. Demon. Bright coiling rainbow. Pony girls.", the teen droned.

"She's completely off her tits. Nothing we get off of her will make any sense.", Back-stab said.

Cozy Glow covered the mic. "Several eyewitnesses said they saw girls with pony ears, demons and a bright coiling rainbow." She uncovered the mic. "Where did the demon, pony girls and the rainbow come from?"

"Sunset Shimmer stole a crown from pony princess....ha-ha-ha-ha! That kinda rhymes! Pony princess!"

"Focus, Lightning. Where did Sunset steal the crown from?"

"The statue of the Wonder Colt."

"What is the name of the princess?"

"Twilight Sparkle."

Cozy Glow gestured at Back-stab, who pulled out a laptop and began furiously typing away. "What happened when Sunset Shimmer got that crown."

"Sunset Shimmer became demon. Tore down front of school. Made us all into demons. Twilight and friends became pony girls. Shot rainbow at her. She cry. Cry. Cry."

The EEG lines on the computer screen began to spike wildly. Red lights began blinking on the screen.

"Oh shit!", Underhand shouted as she snatched up a syringe from the table.

"Short Fuse! Nooooooo! Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh! Breathe! Look at me! Don't go away! Nonononononononono!" Lightning Dust flailed and struggled in her restraints as tears poured from under the VR display.

Underhand plunged the needle on the syringe into the flailing teen's neck. Within minutes the girl settled down and slumped in the chair. "Let's give her a few hours to rest. Obviously something triggered a traumatic memory.", she said as she withdrew the needle from Lightning Dust's neck and held a cotton ball over the wound. "And hope she didn't give herself a full-on psychotic regression. No amount of anti-drug PSAs would explain away a healthy teenager being turned into a drooling, gibbering, mostly grown infant shell over the course of a couple of days."

"That's fine. I'll need to compile the data from her brain readings, combine them with the recordings and send them off to the labs for the boys to pick over.", Cozy Glow said. "Unless I've missed my mark, we may have proof that a parallel universe exists. Number One will be pleased. And you know what that means? Sitting on a white sandy, tropical beach, being served frozen, rum-based drinks for the rest of our lives!"

Lightning Dust was given four hours of rest before she was given a new round of the cocktail. Her post-hypnotic programming was started. Over the next eight hours subliminal messages were intertwined with distorted music, swirling colorful patterns and brightly flashing images. The activation phrase "Sunset Shimmer is your best friend" was programmed into her head.

Once the last of the programming was finished, the VR headset and headphones were removed from Lightning Dust. The restraints holding her to the chair were removed and she slumped forward.

Underhand caught the teen. "Lightning, honey. Can you tell me where you got the drugs from?"

"Dunno. Went out to hang with Gilda and Spitfire. Met some of the Preppies. Had a fight. Lost my friends. Met a cool chick who gave me beer. Made me feel weird.", the teen replied robotically.

"Good!", Underhand praised. "Come on now! We're gonna take you to the ER."

Underhand slung the girl's arm across her shoulder and lifted her up to her feet. Grabbing three syringes off the nearby table, she trundled up the stairs with the out-of-it girl in tow.

"Tell me you've got something on Twilight Sparkle.", Cozy Glow said to Back-stab.

"There is a Twilight Sparkle enrolled at Crystal Preparatory Academy. Enrolled there two years ago. All her scores place her IQ in the top three percent in the world. The girl's a certified genius. Has an understanding of theoretical and hypothetical physics, like an almost instinctual understanding of the subjects. She could be the one to figure out a unified field theory. Her psych eval shows her having moderate-to-severe neurosis, mild-to-moderate social phobias, anti-social personality disorder, a near-crippling fear of failure, and an odd phobia of...quesadillas."

Cozy Glow taped a knuckle to her lips in thought. "I'm sensing a 'but' here."

Back-stab taped a few buttons on the computer. "On September eighteenth through the twentieth, a girl matching her description was seen on campus at Canterlot High School by eyewitnesses. According to photos you snapped in the school, she was crowned the Fall Formal Queen." He pulled up the images of both girls on the screen.

Cozy Glow pointed to the picture of the Twilight from the Fall Formal. "That's not the same girl from Crystal Prep. This girl is older, by at least a couple of years...and taller." She tented her fingers. "Unless Twilight Sparkle of Crystal Praparatory Academy has a near-identical twin, I think we've just found photographic proof of a parallel universe."





Underhand shoved Lightning Dust into the front passenger seat of the powder blue hatchback with swapped plated sitting in the garage, then walked around and stepped into the driver's seat. She held up the three syringes, looking them over and jammed them one after the other in Lightning's upper arm. She then pulled out a full head rubber mask, a grey wig and a pair of fake glasses. Looking in the mirror, she shrugged at the image that made her look passable enough as an old lady.

"Funny mashk! Phbbbbbbt!", Lightning Dust slurred before slumping against the window and groaning. "Were-were-were-were you the one who gave me the beer, white powder and blue footballs that made me feel good and funny?"

"No, honey. I found you passed out in the park. Remember?"

"Ah, yes. 'Member! I 'member! Cool chick gave me beer."

Underhand rolled her eyes behind the mask. She's really off her tits. Let's hope the worst of the OD symptoms don't kick in before I make it to the hospital and she pukes in the car.

Underhand pulled up to the hospital, drove up to the emergency room entrance, opened the passenger side door and shoved Lightning Dust out onto the concrete. She laid on the horn for a couple of seconds, stomped on the gas and sped away, the tires leaving a cloud of white smoke behind. After pulling away from the hospital, she merged into traffic and disappeared into the night.

After driving halfway across town, Underhand pulled the car to a stop outside a bar frequented by frat boys, wiped the interior down to remove as many of her fingerprints as possible and stepped out of the car. She tossed the keys to a group of frat boys leering lustfully at passing girls and said through the mask,"It's my ex-husband's. Have fun boys." As the frat boys whooped and shouted as they piled into the car, she slipped into the crowd. After walking a couple of blocks, she took off the mask, wig and fake glasses, and tossed them into a dumpster. She stepped to the corner and stretched out her hand. "Taxi!"





It was the Monday morning before the first bell at CHS. The intercom came on with a squeal of feedback and Principal Celestia's voice spoke. "Would Gilda T Griffon and Spitfire Peggy Asus report to the principal's office, please?"

Gilda and Spitfire walked to Principal Celestia's door. They noticed the cop cars sitting out front.

"You know what's going on, Gil?"

"No clue, Spits."

"Don't tell anybody my middle name, or I'll kick your ass."

"Sure thing, Peggy."

"Grr!"

Spitfire and Gilda stepped in through the door to the principal's office. They immediately noticed the two cops standing there.

"Uh...you called for us, Principal Celestia?", Spitfire asked.

"Ah, yes. Officer...Figpucker?"

The police officer in question cleared his throat. "Last night at about one in the morning, someone dropped off..." He paused to look at his notes before continuing. "Lightning Dust at the Emergency room. She had overdosed on a combination of cocaine and Xanax. This morning when she was stable enough to talk to us, she said that she had been hanging out with you two last night, ran into a couple of girls from Crystal Preparatory School, got into a fight. In the ensuing scuffle--"

"Officer Figpucker, maybe you should let me ask them the questions.", Sergeant Shining Armor interrupted.

FigPucker turned to Shining. "Shiny, I thought you agreed to let me question the kids.", he whispered hoarsely.

"I know, Figgy. But my sister is about the same age as them. You gotta know how to talk to teenagers.", Shining Armor whispered back. "The Starswirl Music Festival is coming up in a few weeks. I'll swap shifts with you for that so you can go see that girl of yours, and ya know, give some of that Figgy Pudding."

Figpucker blew out a sigh. "Fine! I'll let you question the two girls...and you promised you wouldn't use Figgy pudding any more."

Shining snickered as he stepped over to the two girls."Uh...Spitfire and Gilda, right? When was the last time you two saw Lightning Dust?"

"Nobody's talked to Lightning in over a week. She stopped coming to practice, stopped answering everyone's texts.", Spitfire said.

"I haven't seen her since lit class on Friday.", Gilda said. She held up her hands, showing the backs of them to Shinning Armor. "Look at my knuckles. They ain't swollen or nuthin'. Don't'cha think that if I had kicked the shit outa some preppie richy bitches, my knuckles would be scuffed up?" She then flexed her arms. "Besides, If I did kick the asses of some rich girls...I mean, come on!...look at these guns! You'd still be scraping them off of the road. If those preppie bitches gave her the drugs, I swear I'm gonna force feed'em their teeth!" She pounded her fist into her palm for effect.

"Whoa whoa whoa! Easy now!", Shining exclaimed as he held his hand up. "Nobody said anything about anyone from Crystal Prep giving her drugs. Lightning Dust said she had been hanging out with you two, got into a fight with a couple of girls from Crystal Prep, got separated from you two and ran into someone who gave her the drugs. She was still kinda out of it when she talked to us, so she could be misremembering things." He pulled a couple of business cards from his shirt pocket. "If either of you two remember her talking about going to meet anyone or hear someone talking about giving her drugs, call me."

That will be all, Miss Griffon, Miss Asus.", Principal Celestia said. "If you talk to Miss Inkwell on your way out, she'll write you both hall passes."

After Gilda and Spitfire left, Celestia turned to the two police. "Thank you officers Armor and Fig...pucker." It took everything she had to not accidentally say anything vulgar. "If I see or hear anything, I'll let you two know."
> Gabby Gums makes up your sins
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The lines between the cliques had been drawn, Gabby Gums and its copycat sites had been the chalk. Cozy Glow could practically see the lines of tension, she could practically touch them. Teenagers are so easy to convince them to turn on one another. A juicy article here, a heavily edited picture there, sprinkle a modified video on top and today's best friends would be at each other's throats tomorrow. If there was only a way to weaponize that and someone could take over the world.

As much as Cozy Glow would have liked to further whip wild teenage emotions into a frenzy, like a conductor of a symphony of chaos, until the school broke out in a riot, she had a statue to investigate. Approaching the plinth that held the school's mascot, Trotting Jumper the Wonder Colt, she pulled out a silvery metal tube that contained sensitive EM sensors. She twisted the top to switch on the sensitive instruments within, slowly walked around the statue's plinth and waved the tube up and down slowly.

"What'chu doin'?", came the bubbly voice of Pinkie Pie.

Cozy Glow turned to face the hyperactive party girl as she hid the metal tube containing EM sensors behind her back and twisted the top to switch the instruments off. She twisted the toe of her shoe on the pavement and twisted her body back and forth as she said, "I wasn't doin' nuthin'! Promise! I was just pretending to be a scientist from the Allied Stars Republic." Hopefully that would be enough for the pink menace and leave her alone to do her job.

"Oooohhhh! I love Star Tracker!", Pinkie exclaimed as she clapped her hands and jumped up and down. "I have my own scanner!" She pulled a silver-painted plastic tube from seemingly nowhere. "Mind if I play with you? You can be Spork and I'll be Placard!"

Cozy Glow had to fight her own reaction to raise an eyebrow at the pink menace that was able to pull a toy prop from seemingly nowhere. Does she dabble in sleight of hand? She mentally sighed and resigned herself to pretending to play pretend that she was reenacting a character from a hokey science fiction TV show that was nearly sixty years old to keep her work disguised as the actions of a harmless middle school-aged girl. "Yes, it'll be fun to pretend to be a member of the crew of the Allied Star Ship Consolation with someone." Cozy had to struggle to keep the irritated and annoyed inflections out of her voice, as well as to not clench her teeth.

Pinkie squealed with delight as she began waving her silver-painted plastic replica of a scanner around the base of the statue as she made various warbling noises with her mouth. Cozy Glow waited until Pinkie was on the opposite side of the statue's plinth from her to twist the top of the metal tube to turn the scanning instruments back on.

"Captain Placard...", Cozy said, staying in character as a middle school-aged girl pretending to be a grown man playing an alien from an old science fiction TV show. "...could you assist me with reaching the top of the monument's plinth so I can continue scanning the area from a higher altitude?"

"Yes, Mister, Spork, I, will help, you, get, the, data, you, need.", Pinkie replied in a near perfect imitation of the hammy inflections of the actor who played Placard. She knelt down, meshed her fingers together, forming her hands into a platform, so that Cozy Glow could step into them and get boosted up.

As Cozy righted herself atop the plinth, she mentally remarked how deceptively strong Pinkie was. The girl wasn't part of any sports teams, didn't work on a farm or at any other job that required a lot of heavy lifting. All she ever seen this girl do was skip around, hang out with her friends and have a seemingly endless supply of candy, baked goods and other sugary sweets. "Wow-ee! You sure are strong!"

"My family owns a rock farm, so I've spent a looooooot of time turning big rocks into gravel. And with Mrs. Cake being six-and-a-half months pregnant with twins, the doctor has ordered her on bed rest until after she gives birth, so I've had to help Mr. Cake bring big bags of flour and sugar up from the basement storeroom."

Luna pulled up into the school parking lot and saw Pinkie boosting Cozy up onto the plinth of the statue of the school's mascot. Getting out of the car, she retrieved Sunset's wheelchair from the back seat, unfolded it and helped her foster daughter into it. "Go to the cafeteria and get yourself a milk or a juice or something, I've got something to take care of real quick and I'll catch up.", she said, shoving a wad of bills into the girl's hand.

Sunset, whom had seen what was going on, nodded. "Yeah, I'll see ya in a little bit." Stuffing the bills into her pocket, she grasped the rims of the wheels on her chair and rolled to the school entrance.

From her vantage point atop the statue plinth Cozy Glow spotted Luna pulling up. She shimmied around to the front of the statue and made it look like she was having an awkward time of it. If the students and faculty of the school knew that she had extensive training in both free climbing and urban exploration as part of her Specter training, they'd be less inclined to believe she was in any real threat being a little more than six feet up, because they didn't know that, she had a cover to keep. While making it look like she was having trouble moving around the statue and getting scared, she slipped the metal tube into the horse statue's mouth, then clung onto its neck to make it look like she was having trouble and was scared and hanging on for dear life.

Luna hurried up to the state. "What do you two think you're doing?!" Though it was in the inflection of a question, it was more of a statement that they were in trouble and she was laying it out as a question in the hopes they'd at least tell the truth and save themselves further trouble by lying, something that rarely happened with teenagers who were caught with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

Pinkie, not hearing the vice-principal walking up, nearly jumped out of her skin at the question. "Oh! Vice-principal Luna, you scared me!", she said in a fright. "We were--"

"Climbing on the statue when you know it's against the rules?", Luna interrupted. "Pinkamena Dianne Pie, you know the rules about climbing on the statue and how dangerous it can be. Or did you forget about when Rainbow Dash climbed up there on a dare, fell off and broke her arm?"

Pinkie hung her head. She flexed her hands into fists as she remembered the way Rainbow cried out after hitting the pavement. Tears shimmered in her eyes and her messy curls started to flatten out. "I-I'm sorry, Miss Luna. We-we were just pl--" A panicked squeal interrupted her sorrowful apology.

Cozy Glow heard and saw what was going on. She wasn't sure if Pinkie would throw her under the bus, but she knew that she'd do the same to the pink menace if the tables were turned. For a quick second, the corners of her mouth turned up in a devious grin. Kicking her feet out from under her, she let them hang in the open air while hanging onto the neck of the horse statue. "AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!", she shrieked in mock fright. "I don't wanna die! I don't wanna die! Dear Baby Jesus, please don't let me die!"

Luna rushed over to the dangling Cozy and wrapped the girl's thighs in a bear hug. "I gotcha! You can let go. I promise you won't fall."

"I don't wanna die! I don't wanna die! I don't wanna die!"

"Cozy! You won't die! I promise! Just let go!"

A dozen students gathered around the scene to watch what was going on. A few had pulled their phones to film what was happening.

Celestia, who had been alerted to something happening by the commotion and gathering students, came out the front door of the school to see Cozy Glow dangling off the neck of the horse statue with Luna holding her by the thighs and telling her to let go. Several students had gathered around, and a few had their phones out, there would clearly be more students on their way if she didn't get control of the situation quickly. "Don't you all have somewhere else to be?", she chided with a scowl on her face.

Several students jerked in surprise.

"Then I suggest you all get there, on the quick.", Celestia further chided. Once the students scattered to other places to be, she  walked over to Luna. "Alright Vice-principal Luna, you get her by one side of her waist, I'll get her by the other side and we'll get her down."

Once both women were on either side of Cozy Glow, their hands gripping her waist, Celestia said,"Alright Cozy Glow, we've got you. Just let go."

"I don't wanna die! I don't wanna die!"

"I promise you, Miss Glow, that you won't die. Just let go and we'll put you on the ground nice and safe."

After another round of Cozy begging that she didn't want to die, Celestia grunted in frustration and let the girl's waist go. "Alright Luna, just let her go for the moment while I get someone here who is more qualified to get her down."

"But what if she slips and falls?"

"Luna, it's a little over five feet. I promise you she won't be seriously hurt."

"But Rainbow Dash--"

"Rainbow Dash was trying to do, in her words, 'A sick gainer and totally boffed it.' That's why she got detention once she got back from the hospital. Unless Cozy Glow is secretly a ninja, a super spy or a gymnast, I don't think she's going to be doing any crazy flips. She's just a girl who was climbing on the statue, lost her footing and got scared.", Celestia interrupted. "Just stay right here to catch her in case she slips so you can catch her. I'm going to call the janitor and be right back."

Celestia briskly walked to the front office and stopped at the secretary's desk. "Raven, would you please call Push Broom? We've got a student who climbed up onto the statue, slipped, panicked and is now hanging off its neck."

Raven Inkwell gave a quick nod, picked up the phone's receiver and punched in the number for the head janitor's office as Celestia turned to walk back out of the office.

A few minutes after Celestia had returned to the situation at the statue, Push Broom, the head janitor, walked out of the front door of the school with a pair of stepladders slung over his shoulders. Stepping up to the statues plinth, he set down both ladders and said, "Little lady, you got yourself in a bit of a doozy there, yah?"

Cozy Glow once again went on another tirade begging not to die. It was a ridiculous situation and she knew, but she needed the distraction so no one would notice the metal tube holding the various sensors she hid in the statue's mouth.

Push Broom set up the two step ladders. "Miss Celestia, wouldja help me get her down, yah? I'll hold the little lady by her midsection while you get her fingers loose. Please and thank you."


***


After the incident was over, Pinkie Pie sat in Vice-principal Luna's office while Cozy Glow sat in Principal Celestia's office.

Luna drummed her fingers together as she stared across her desk at the pink girl, who was nervously fidgeting in her seat. "Pinkie Pie, why don't you tell me your side of things?"

While Pinkie was giving her account, Principal Celestia sat behind her desk studying Cozy Glow's face and posture. "Cozy, why don't you tell me your account of things."

Cozy Glow smiled internally. She had extensive training on how to both passively and actively resist all forms of interrogation. Compared to what various government, and more than a few private "contractor" agencies would use to get information, being questioned by a principal of a public school would be a cakewalk. "Well you see, I was playing make believe by myself over by the statue when Pinkie came over and asked if she could join in." That's right, give just enough truth in your account to make it believable. "She said she wanted to play Star Tracker, so I played along and we pretended to be members of the Alliance ship, Consolation. And well...gee golly, I don't wanna do nuthin' to get somebody in trouble!"

Celestia leaned back in her chair in a more relaxed position and interlaced her fingers in her lap. So far everything Cozy was saying seemed to match up with a middle school-aged girl, the way she talked, the way she shifted her weight, the nervous wiggles. But something seemed to be...off. Her youthful mannerisms seemed to be almost...forced, almost like she was someone older who was good at acting. Then there were her eyes, nothing immediately out of the ordinary, she just lacked that naive sparkle that most children her age had, instead they seemed more observant, almost as if this girl was studying her surroundings. Then there was her voice, usually it had that vibrant, sometimes insecure squeak about it, then there were moments when she seemed to shed that squeak and use inflections of someone much more older...and much more manipulative. "Go on, Cozy. No one was hurt, so I doubt anybody will be in trouble. I just want to hear your side of things."

Cozy Glow pressed the tips of her index fingers together as she looked down at her lap and kicked her feet. She darted her eyes about, giving the physical impressions of a much younger and nervous girl. In reality she was studying her surroundings, and observing the principal's posture and facial expressions. "Well...uh, well you see while we were playing make believe, and Pinkie said I should climb upon the statue. She said that all the kids do it. At first I didn't want to, but she kept insisting and I kept saying I wasn't a very good climber. Then she finally convinced me to climb up. And--and after I got up, Vice-principal Luna had walked up, and she scared me."

"And that's when you slipped?"

"Uh-huh." Cozy Glow put a tremble in her lips and squeezed a few tears as she clasped her hands in front of her chest. "Oh please please please please! I don't want to get in no trouble! If I get in trouble, daddy will be mad and I won't get no dessert for a week! Mamma will yell at me and I won't be able to see my friends for a long time, just sit in my room and do nuthin'! Please please please! I don't wanna be in trouble! I promise I won't go near the statue no more!"

"It's okay, Cozy. You're not in trouble. At least here at school. I'll still have to inform your parents. But because nobody was hurt, there won't be any incidents. It's almost time for the bell. I'll write you a hall pass so you can get past the hall monitors without any incident. You've got first period pre-algebra with..." Celestia taped a few buttons on her computer. "...Miss Count. Is that correct?" There was something about Cozy Glow's story that didn't sit right with her, but she had nothing to corroborate her suspicions. She would have to talk with Luna to match up with Pinkie's story.

Cozy nodded her head. "Yes Ma'am."

Celestia pulled a hall pass out of the drawer on her desk and quickly scribbled down the date time and Cozy's class on the piece of paper. "Here you go. Now hurry on so you won't be too late."

Celestia sat at her desk, drumming her fingers on the top watching Pinkie and Cozy leave while Luna leaned on the door frame of her office. "So Luna, what did Pinkie tell you?"

Luna stepped into Celestia's office, sat down in the chair on the opposite side of the desk, rolled her pant leg up, popped off her prosthetic, adjusted the stocking on her stump, slipped the prosthetic back on and rolled the pant leg back down. "Ah! That's much better. The seam had shifted and was putting pressure on the scars.", she said with a sigh. "Anyways, back to your question. Pinkie said she and Cozy were playing make believe that they were Spork and Placard from The Consolation."

Celestia pressed her fingers together to stretch her hand."Cozy said the same thing. She also said that Pinkie talked her into getting up on the statue."

"That's where their stories differ. Pinkie said Cozy asked to be boosted up onto the plinth so she could 'scan' the statue."

"Scan?"

"Yes. Pinkie said she and Cozy had replicas of the mark-III scanner from Star Tracker. She even showed me hers, and it was a dead ringer for the ones on the show, other than it being made of plastic, having no blinking lights and not making any warbling sci-fi sounds."

Celestia pursed her lips as she pressed her steepled index fingers to them. "Did you see Cozy with one?"

Luna taped a knuckle to her chin as she thought. "You know, I don't recall seeing her with one. She could have dropped it when she slipped and it rolled into the bushes, or maybe someone kicked by accident when the crowd gathered up. Maybe one of them pocketed it?"

Celestia mulled over what Luna had said and compared it to what Cozy had told her. "Luna, have you noticed something odd about Cozy Glow?"

"Odd? What do you mean?"

"Nothing I can definitively  put my finger on. Most of the time when I see her, she acts like a normal young girl, but sometimes she acts..." Celestia rocked her hand back and forth. "I don't know, weird. Like she's older than she puts on and is simply going through the paces of being a kid."

Luna clicked her tongue in thought. "I've seen her act like that before too. I've also seen other kids her age act like that, especially if they're trying to impress one of the adults by trying to be 'more mature.' If you think there's something going on in her home life that's not on the up-and-up, I can keep a closer eye on her and see if she says something."

Celestia sighed. "No, that won't be necessary. She's probably just a kid going through--WHAT THE?!"

Cheerilee burst into the office, disrupting the conversation and startling the two principals. "We've got a fight in the breezeway! Three boys jumped one boy!"

As Celestia, Luna and Cheerilee rushed into the breezeway, the teachers had just finished breaking up the fight and were in the process of clearing out the crowd. Hoops, Score and Dumbbell had jumped Bulk Biceps. Though the muscular boy had bruises and marks on his face, along with a small trickle of blood from his lip, it was clear that he had trounced the three boys, considering they looked much more banged up. All four boys shrunk under the gaze of Principal Celestia and the glare of Vice-principal Luna.

Once the four boys had been checked out by Nurse Redheart and had been cleared as none of them were seriously hurt, they were sent to the principal's office to get to the bottom of the fight. The incident had started when Bulk, after reading an article on Gabby Gums accusing the boy who was the head of the AV club, Micro Chips, saying he had made lewd gestures and comments at the muscular boy's girlfriend accompanied by a clearly doctored photo. He said he just wanted to talk to the boy and had caught up with him in the breezeway. That's when Hoops, Score and Dumbbell showed up looking for trouble. Once the confrontation was over and the two had started to walk away, that's when Hoops shoved Micro Chips into Bulk Biceps.

Celestia and Luna didn't need to hear the rest. Bulk wasn't known to be a bully and had a reputation for standing up for students smaller than him. The fight broke out in earnest when Bulk stepped up to Hoops to confront him, that's when Score and Dumbbell jumped on him, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Celestia blew out a frustrated sigh. "Mister Biceps, I'm sorry, but the school has a zero-tolerance policy on fighting. I know you were defending yourself, and that's why I'm going to go light on you. You get three days of after school detention where you'll be helping Mister Push Broom scrape gum off of the benches, sweep the floors, changing light bulbs, and taking trash to the dumpsters. I also have to contact your parents. Don't worry, I'll tell them that you were defending yourself."

Bulk swallowed and gave a quick nod."Yes ma'am."

Celestia then turned her attention to Hoops, Score and Dumbbell. "You three get two weeks of in school suspension. You'll be spending your time here at school in the detention room, your teachers will bring you your work. While you're at school, you'll spend all your time in the detention room, with the exception of breakfast and lunch, where you'll be eating at the teacher's table, and for restroom breaks. Hoops, Score, you're also suspended from the basketball team for the next five games. Dumbbell, you're suspended from the football team for the next five games, and your privileges for use of the weight room are revoked for the rest of the year. Consider yourselves lucky I don't slap you three into the washouts program for the rest of the semester. Now get out of my sight and report to the detention room immediately!"

Once the incident was with the four boys had been resolved, Celestia leaned back in her chair and blew out a frustrated sigh. She put the stuff with Cozy Glow on the back burner, for now. "This Gabby Gums site is getting out of hand.", she grumbled. "If it keeps up, I'm going to have to call in a favor to someone I prefer not to." Opening the bottom drawer of her desk, she pulled out a bottle of acetaminophen. It wasn't even ten o'clock yet and she was getting a headache.

Luna snapped her fingers."Aw shoot! I promised Sunset that I'd catch up with her in the cafeteria. With all the crud that's happened this morning, it slipped my mind."

Celestia chuckled. "Who would've thought the tough and strong Luna would develop such a soft spot for a girl?" She waved her sister off before she could retort. "I'm just busting your balls, Na-Na. It's heartwarming to see you take Sunset in and give her a home. I know it hasn't been easy helping her. Just cut out on the PG-safe swears. We're not in a for kids' cartoon. Jesus wouldn't hold an occasional cuss word against you, and I would know, I have a personal line to his office."

The two women shared a hearty chuckle at the last statement.


***


As the bell for lunch rang, Luna made her way to the cafeteria. Along the way she ran across Sunset being pushed in her wheelchair by Fluttershy as Applejack walked beside. They didn't notice her as she walked up, catching the tail end of their conversation. Celestia had opted to not go to the cafeteria.

"Fluttershy, I told you that you don't have to push me.", Sunset said with a slightly annoyed tone in her voice.

"But you were having so much trouble with your wheelchair. Your arms must be getting tired.", Fluttershy replied.

"My arms weren't getting tired, 'Shy.", Sunset said. "I had forgotten to unlock the brake on my left wheel. And besides, I've been working out, building up their strength and endurance." She flexed her right arm in demonstration, showing off the increase in muscle definition.

A blush glowed on Fluttershy's cheeks and she moved one hand from the handles on the wheelchair to fan her face.

"Jus' give her this one, sugarcube.", Applejack said. "Ya ain't gonna talk her outa this. When 'Shy gets it in her head that she's gonna help someone, by God she'll do it, even if'n they're the most lowdown, meanest rattlesnake there is."

"Rattlesnakes aren't mean. They just act aggressive when scared and shake their rattles to scare away whatever is scaring them.", Fluttershy said.

"Fluttershy, Ah live on a farm. Ah know how snakes act and Ah know that rattlesnakes aren't th' mean'uns, it's th' moccasins.", Applejack retorted. "Ah'd know 'cause me an' Mac have had to shoot more'n a few of'em with daddy's ol' twenty-two when they get too close to th' house or get up in th' barn. Callin' someone a rattlesnake is jus' a country-ism for callin' someone mean. Ah've tol' ya this b'fore"

"And what is this about Sunset having trouble with her wheelchair?", Luna asked as she walked up, making the three girls jerk in surprise.

"Oh! Vice-principal Luna, I didn't see you there.", Sunset said in surprise and mild shock.

Luna smirked. She always had the ability to not be noticed if she so chose to and she used that ability more than once to catch many a student with their proverbial hand in the cookie jar.

"Fluttershy and I have three classes together.", Sunset continued. "In second period lit I had only locked my left wheel. When class was over, I had forgotten to unlock my brake."

"And why didn't you lock both wheels?"

"If the floor is level, I only lock one wheel so if someone has to walk behind me and bumps into the chair, I don't go rolling. If I'm in the back of the class, I don't lock the wheels as no one will be walking behind my chair."

Luna hummed in thought. "I can see the logic in that. But what happened that you wound up not unlocking your brake?"

"Lit class today was extremely boring as Miss Off Script was talking on and on and on aaaaaaaannnnnnnndddddd on about her love for The Divine Comedy, and everyone was struggling to not fall asleep. I had to pee really bad, so when the bell rang, I stuffed my books into my backpack and went to go to the bathroom as quickly as possible...only to realize I had forgotten to unlock my left brake. I spun around in a half-circle and knocked over three desks. That's when Fluttershy rushed over, grabbed the handles and unlocked my brake while saying, 'Oh you poor dear! Your arms must be getting tired!'" Sunset pulled her hair into a style similar to Fluttershy's as she imitated the shy, socially awkward and introverted animal lover. With a quick flip of her hair and a shake of her head, her hair went back to its usual style.

Luna silently noted Sunset's pantomiming Fluttershy's mannerisms and the way she quickly flipped her hair to match the animal lover's hairstyle, then flipped her coiffure back to its normal laying. Must be a pony thing. I'll have to ask Sunset about this later. She snapped her head to a student who was rushing through the halls and pointed a finger. "Hey! Does this look like a racetrack?! No running in the halls!" She smirked as the student froze like a deer in a headlight before resuming at a brisk walk. "Well now that the mystery of why Fluttershy was pushing you is solved, I can push you to the cafeteria myself. You know, foster mother privileges and whatnot. Now scooch!", she said turning her attention back to Sunset and waving Fluttershy away from Sunset's wheelchair's handles. The animal lover quickly relinquished her spot from behind the wheelchair.

"I was also pushing her because I like the way her hair smells and she looks pretty.", Fluttershy mumble-whispered.

Only barely noticing the animal lover's voice above the din of students in the hallway, the three looked over at her.

"Did you say something, Fluttershy?", Luna asked.

Fluttershy's face felt hot as her cheeks turned rosy pink. "Eep! Oh...uh...uuuuummmmmm...er...I was just saying...it's a pretty day today."

"Why, yes it is. Not too cold for this time of year and the sun's all bright and shiny.", Luna replied, acting like she hadn't what the shy girl said.

Applejack raised an eyebrow at the shy animal lover and gave a hum as her internal lie detector went off.

The corners of Luna's mouth curled up as she restrained a chuckle. "You know what? I forgot something in my office. Fluttershy, could you push Sunset to the cafeteria? I'll catch up in a few."

Fluttershy nearly jumped for joy. "Oh! Um, yes! Yes. I can do that."

In the line leading away from the hot bar holding trays food and towards the cash register, Sunset felt self-conscious as Fluttershy pushed her and carried their trays. "Fluttershy, you don't have to do this. I can carry my food and wheel myself."

"I don't mind one bit.", Fluttershy said.

At the register Granny Smith rang up the cost of the trays and Sunset quickly shoved the wadded up bills covering the cost of her lunch into the elderly lunch lady's hand before Fluttershy had the chance to pay for both.

At what had quickly become their usual table, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie and Applejack were waiting on them.

"So Fluttershy, did you tell Sunset that you like-like her yet?", Rainbow blurted out.

Sunset froze in place in shock, her fork halfway to her face, the strands of spaghetti clinging to the tinee dripping sauce onto the tray and table. Her fingers twitched and the fork fell from her grasp, clattering on the table and down onto the floor. I've been an idiot. Her hovering over me like a mother hen and insisting on pushing me everywhere. How could I not notice it? I need to let her down gently. How to do that?

Fluttershy quailed, she shrunk back in her seat and hid behind her long locks, a single eye peering out, darting about in a mix of fear, social anxiety and embarrassment.

The other three girls simply glared at the rainbow-haired athlete.

"What?", Rainbow asked cluelessly. "No, seriously, what?"

Applejack facepalmed. "Dear sweet Baby Jesus, give me th' strength ta not bounce her head off the table.", Applejack muttered. "RD, that's somethin'...ya jus' dun drop inta someone's lap like a live grenade, ya friggin' idjit."

"Allow me, darling.", Rarity interjected. She waggled a finger at Rainbow. "Rainbow Dash! A lady doesn't blurt out to someone if they have told them they like them in that manner. Especially in front of their crushee!"

"Yeah. Totally uncool, Dashie!", Pinkie scolded. "I know that Fluttershy crushing on Sunset has been as clear as sugar syrup, but you just don't blurt out if someone like-likes them for everyone to see. Right, Maud?"

"Yes, Pinkie.", the eldest Pie sister said, seemingly to appear out of thin air. "It took Boulder five years to tell pebble he liked her. And when she rejected him, I helped him get over the heartache."

The other five girls nearly jumped out of their skin.

Rarity held a hand to her chest, feeling her heart beating like a heavy metal drummer during a solo. "How long have you been there, darling?"

"Only about thirty seconds. I usually come to talk to Pinkie and see how her day is going when you all are talking with each other. I don't interject or interrupt as it would be rude."

After a moment, the girl's heart rates finally got back down to a more normal level.

Rainbow sheepishly rubbed the back of her head. "Heh. Uh...sorry about that, Flutters."

"Fluttershy..." Sunset paused, unsure how to word it so as to not hurt the feelings of the animal lover. "Uh...Ah...um..." She picked at one of the armrests on her wheelchair. How to word it? How to word it? Maybe I should...no, that'll hurt her feelings too much.

After what felt like an eternity in her head of trying how to word it, Sunset finally decided on what to say. "Fluttershy, I'm very flattered that you like...uh...like-like me in that way, and know that any girl who dates you will be the luckiest girl in the world. You're one of my best friends in the world, but..." She swallowed hard, there was nothing she could say to keep Fluttershy from crying and it made her feel like an asshole. "I'm not into girls that way. Sorry." The last word came out in a squeaky tone.

Fluttershy visibly wilted and shrank back in her chair, trying to look as small as possible. She hung her head, pink locks cascading down and obscuring her face completely. What those locks couldn't hide were the small sniffles.

Sunset felt terrible. It wasn't her intention to make Fluttershy cry, but she was letting out soft sniffles. She reached out across the table to take her friend's hand. "Fluttershy, it wasn't my inten--"

Fluttershy quickly stood up from the table and bolted from the cafeteria.

Sunset propped her forehead on her hand. She felt like a capital B-I, lowercase itch. Tear stung her eyes as the image of Fluttershy bawling her eyes out danced in her head.

A dark blue hand came to rest on Sunset's shoulder. "Sunset? Is everything okay?"

"No!", Sunset croaked out. It was taking everything in her to not break down into a sobbing fit. "Fluttershy said she liked me and I rejected her. I told her I wasn't into girls." Her lips quivered and weird dimpled crinkles spread on her chin as tears rolled down her cheeks. It was taking everything she had to not break down into an ugly crying fit. "Should I have told her different so she would cry?"

Luna gently turned Sunset's wheelchair around and wrapped her foster daughter in a hug. "No. It would have made it much worse down the line. Rejection always hurts. What you did was better, get it over quickly, like snatching off a band-aid. It may hurt a lot now, but it will also let the pain fade quickly."

Sunset reached up and wrapped her hands around Luna's back to hug her foster mother back, and poured her pain into the woman's shoulder.

Tears shimmered in the other four girls' eyes and they sniffled at the sight of what was going on...except for Rainbow, who gave a few loud coughs to cover up her sniffles and turned away so no one could see her dragging a knuckle across her eye, wiping a few tears away.


***


Tears blurred Fluttershy's eyes as she hurried through the breezeways, ducking and weaving past the other students. If she was capable of thinking clearly, she would've been appreciative that Sunset chose to attempt tolet her down easy, but right now all she could focus on was the sting of rejection, and she just wanted to be alone so no one would see her cry.

Near the back of the school, just past the faculty parking lot, was a patch of oak, pine, poplar and ash trees. Fluttershy walked down a well beaten path and sat on a fallen log. She placed her face in her hands and began to bawl her eyes out.

Wallflower Blush was on her hands and knees in a clearing in the trees, digging up a hole with a trowel to plant a small flowering shrub. She occasionally took a bite from a bologna sandwich that was in her lunch box and took a sip of the fruit punch in her thermos. During lunch period, this was where she took refuge. The sounds of nature help to soothe her nerves. Working with plants also helped her deal with the unwanted mental images of the fire-haired girl being shot and laying on the floor, her life's blood forming a crimson pool on the waxed linoleum tiles. True, there was a lot Sunset deserved for her years of bullying and tormenting her, but nobody deserved to be gunned down like an animal.

The images of that day played out in Wallflower's mind's eye. The gleam of the gun. Sunset standing there, frozen in place like a deer in headlights. Wallflower wanted to shout, wanted to run, wanted to do something...but suddenly her body felt like it was suddenly turned to stone. Then she remembered her ears ringing from the thunder of the pistol and seeing spots before her eyes as the muzzle flash had blinded her. Sunset slumped to the floor as if her legs were suddenly made of string.

Everything had screamed inside of Wallflower to run, to get away, but her body refused to move. She remembered the boy standing over Sunset as the fire-haired asked one question with faltering words, "Why?" She then remembered a yellow blur that went by, Fluttershy, the quiet, introverted and socially awkward girl had thrown herself into the shooter, and all Wallflower could do was stand transfixed, like some witch had cast a freezing spell on her. She remembered the boy running outside, followed by another girl, a minute later there was a loud pop and someone screaming.

Wallflower clenched the loamy soil in one hand tightly and knocked herself on the temple with the heel of her other hand in a vain attempt to knock the unwanted images out of her head. "You're a fucking coward!", she cursed to herself. From the day Sunset was shot, and every day since, she was filled with loathing and self-hate.

Wallflower froze. Over the sounds of the breeze through the boughs, the chirps of birds and the skitter-scatter of small critters was the sounds of crying. Someone was in the wooded patch, her wooded patch, crying. Curiosity getting the better of her, she closed her lunchbox, stood up and snuck through the underbrush, careful to not crush her plants underfoot, step on any twigs, or generally make any noise louder than a rabbit. Sitting on a log crying was the girl she had a secret crush on, the most beautiful girl she had ever known, practically an angel given flesh, Fluttershy.

Wallflower stood behind the tree on the edge of the clearing watching Fluttershy cry. She waffled. She wanted to walk up to the girl, the most beautiful creature she had ever seen, and ask her what was the matter. She wanted to proclaim how she felt to her secret crush how she really felt. That thought made it feel like butterflies were dancing in her belly and made her face feel hot. Simultaneously the thought filled her with dread, as it was extremely difficult for her to talk to anybody.

Wallflower finally decided to leave and save herself any further dread. Preparing to turn away, but daring to take one last long look at the most beautiful creature, she took a single step backwards.

*snap*

Wallflower silently cursed herself. She had been so careful to not step on any twigs, only to step backwards on one.

Fluttershy stopped crying and lifted her head. "Hello? Is...um...is someone there?" She looked in the direction of the snapping twig. As her eyes searched for someone, she noticed vines growing on trellises and evenly spaced flowers. "I'm sorry if I'm in the middle of your garden. It's a very nice garden." She paused to see if somebody responded. "Uh...I'll just go."

Wallflower's legs seemed to move with a life of their own. "No!", she said sharply. "I mean, uh...no. Please stay." What was she doing?! She never talked this much to anyone before, just kept her head down and kept quiet.

Fluttershy smiled at the green-skinned girl that was moving into the clearing. The freckles on her cheeks made her look cute. Her messy dark green hair was perfectly offset by her brown eyes. Her sweater was a bit frumpy, but it fit her well.

Wallflower swallowed her as she stood face-to-face with Fluttershy. Her eyes traced up her secret crush's form, the way the jeans clung to her legs, the way her winter shirt seemed to be perfectly made for her, and those turquoise eyes. She felt simultaneously terrified and exuberant.

"Um...hi.", Fluttershy said softly.

OH MY GOD! She's talking to me! "Um...hi.", Wallflower said back softly.


***


A thin and homely man sat in a darkened room as the images on his three computer monitors danced in his eyes. The long, thin fingers danced across the keyboard and he clicked his mouth. He let out a chuckle as he rerouted the latest attempt by Specter to find out who he was, they'd give anything to find out the real name of mastermind who uploaded the chaos virus to their mainframe . He was only known to most only by his screenname, D15k0rd. He switched back to his original task, assisting Interpol in finding what happened to one of the most wanted and dangerous spies that had escaped prison weeks ago.

On the desk near his keyboard, his cell phone rang. The thin and homely man picked it up. Reading who was calling, a smile spread across his thin lips. Smoothing out his white goatee, he pressed the green icon on the screen and held the phone up to his ear. "Celly, you old cake-eater! Long time, no speak! So how ya been?"