A Sunset Scorned (side story by ScipioSmith)

Sunset Shimmer tucked her hands behind her head. "You know, one thing that you can say about Beacon: the roofs are a lot easier to sit on that they are at Haven. More flat surfaces."

Cinder chuckled. "Mistralian architecture is a sight to behold, so much better than anything that drab Vale has to offer, but at the same time it is definitely designed for looks first, then comfort."

"You'd know more about that than me," Sunset said.

"Yes, of course," Cinder said. "How was it in Atlas?"

Sunset considered this for a moment. "Atlas has the best views, by a long way."

"You think so?" Cinder asked.

"I know it," Sunset said. "If only because it's floating however many miles up in the air. You can see…you can see the whole world spread out before you, so small and yet at the same time so…like you could just reach out and take it all."

"Sounds…perfect," Cinder purred. "A world just waiting for a hand to grasp it. Yes, I can see the appeal."

"I thought you might," Sunset said. "I'll show it to you one day, if you like? After the Festival, maybe."

Cinder was silent for a moment. "I have always wanted to see Atlas." A smile crept across her features. "Not so much as I've wanted to see your semblance though."

Sunset rolled her eyes. "This again? Come on, Cinder."

"What's the harm?" Cinder said. "First years don't compete with second years in the Vytal Festival, so it's not as though you need to hide your semblance from me to maintain some kind of advantage." She shrugged. "Not that you'd need one, of course."

Sunset's eyes narrowed. "Do you think I'm susceptible to such shallow flattery?"

"Flattery?" Cinder repeated in a shocked tone. "Flattery?" She laughed. "I'm being honest, Sunset; everyone knows that you're the best huntress in Team Dust by a long way, just the same way that they all know that you should have been the leader-"

"My time will come," Sunset growled.

Cinder cocked her head slightly to one side. "Do you have a plan in mind?"

"I don't need a plan," Sunset said lightly. "I've got a meathead for a team leader and field missions coming up. Either she'll get herself killed doing something insane – in which case there'll be a team leader spot open – or she'll almost get everyone else killed doing something stupid and even Professor Lionheart will have to see reason and recognise the person who really deserves to be the leader of this team." It was a win win for her, and – as she thought – pretty much foolproof at the same time. The only thing that Sunset might need to do was nudge Lightning Dust into taking a difficult mission that offered plenty of scope for her to fail, but she doubted that her team leader would need a great deal of persuasion on that score. Their glorious leader had managed to get by so far on the fact that First Years only got the kiddie missions that were not too dangerous. Second Years were given a lot more rope by which to hang themselves and Lightning Dust would take as much rope as she was allowed and then some. Just because she'd broken a few records at Combat School she thought that she was the gods' gift to Remnant and it had pleased Professor Lionheart to reinforce that belief in her for reasons that passed the understanding of Sunset Shimmer. How could such a vain, arrogant, cocksure little-

"Sunset?" Cinder broke into her ruminations, pointing downwards at Sunset's wrist, which had begun to steam.

Sunset covered it with her other hand. "Thanks," she said. "I…I normally have more control than that. I've gotten a lot better."

Cinder smirked. "Did I just see your semblance?"

Sunset pouted. "You saw the beginnings of my semblance."

Cinder was silent for a moment. Sunset could see her eyes working. She was smart, was Cinder Fall; that was one of the things that Sunset liked about her. She didn't need to have everything spelled out for her.

"Self-ignition," Cinder said softly. "You can set yourself ablaze…when you get angry?"

"That's how it started," Sunset admitted. "But now…" She raised her hand, and at her will a blue fire engulfed it, wreathing her skin in a cold flame that spread down her arm, burning through her clothes without destroying them. "I can do it whenever I want."

Cinder stared for a moment. The flames danced in her eyes. "You know there's a Beacon girl with a semblance very similar," she murmured.

The flames turned from blue to yellow at the suggest that Sunset's semblance was a counterfeit or inferior replica of one that another possessed. "I've seen Yang Xiao-Long in action," Sunset said. "The fire strengthens her…but it protects me. That's why I call it my Phoenix Armour. With it, no one can touch me."

Cinder was silent, but in her silence she moved her hands closer to the flames that had now spread all the way to Sunset's shoulder. Her fingers touched the flickering, dancing flames, only for her to recoil with a yelp of pain.

"I see what you mean," Cinder murmured. "If you can wreathe your whole body so-"

"I can."

"Then nobody can strike at you without harming themselves."

"Like I said: no one can touch me," Sunset said. The fire died, the flames quivering as they diminished, shrinking down into her skin until there was no even smoke to show that there had ever been flames. "Unless I allow it," she added, holding out her smokeless, fire-less hand towards Cinder.

Smoke rose from Sunset's back as she kicked the door of what had been Cinder's locker. She had been doing that for some time now, and the metal was crumpled and bent and torn in places, screeching and groaning every time her foot slammed into the door that had belonged to her…to the person whom she'd thought had been…to the one she'd thought she could trust.

Cinder. She'd thought that there was something between them: a kinship, an understanding. Cinder was the first person that she'd met at Haven whom she'd thought really could understand her, which was more than could be said for any of her team-mates. They'd seemed to be so similar…or they honestly were similar, which might have been better or might have been worse, depending on what you preferred to think: that Sunset had been taken for a ride by the erstwhile freshman student or Sunset was similar in nature to a…

A what? A traitor, they said, but a traitor to what? Nobody knew, or rather nobody who knew was saying anything more than that Cinder was a wanted girl now. But wanted for what? What had she done, and to who? What had she done that was so bad that they had emptied out the school before they tried to take her in?

And what was she that they had failed to do so.

So many questions? So many questions without answers; that fact might have been even more maddening than the one fact that Sunset knew: that her friend had betrayed her.

Despite what people thought, Sunset Shimmer was not completely self-interested. Unlike her unworthy team leader she cared about more than simply how many trophies ended up in her trophy cabinet, how many times her name was mentioned in a record book; she cared about the world, about the state of humanity; she'd been offered a record deal when she was sixteen by some promoter offering to make her the next Sapphire Shores, but Sunset had turned it down and gone to Haven to study to become a huntress because she cared; because she wished to see the glory of mankind renewed. True, Sunset intended to play a leading part in the restoration of that glory herself – she had visions of planting a flag on top of one of the tallest buildings in Mountain Glenn, proudly proclaiming that the jewel of the Kingdom of Vale had been reclaimed for men, that never again would they suffer it to fall into the hands of monsters – but only because she knew that her virtues, strengths and abilities all suited her to play such a lead role for all that Professor Lionheart seemed blind to the fact. But she was here for mankind because that was what it meant to be a huntress.

And Cinder, whatever she had or hadn't done, why ever exactly they were after her, had spat on that. She had turned her back upon it, and that…that Sunset could not forgive.

Of course, that wasn't exactly why she was angry.

Nobody can touch me unless I let them. Stupid, stupid, stupid! When are you going to learn?

When are you going to give it up already?

Nobody cares about you. That's why we keep them away. That's why we burn, so they can't touch us.

Sunset was here for humanity, but in an abstract sense; she cared about mankind, she cared about advancing its good but that wasn't the same thing as caring about any actual people she knew; mostly because none of the people she knew showed much sign of caring about her, and never had. She tried to fit in, to stand alongside her fellow Haven students in their rivalry with Atlas, but all the same…it was like there was a wall between her and the rest of the world.

Leadership, she hoped, would alleviate the sense of that; there was supposed to be a wall between a leader and their team, as there was between a princess and her subjects, but until that time…

She thought…she had hoped…that Cinder might be different, but that was only a part of the deception, wasn't it?

Stupid, stupid.

"That poor locker," the voice of Lightning Dust, tinted with mockery, assailed Sunset's ears from behind. "What did it ever do to you?"

Yellow-orange flames rose across Sunset's back as she narrowed her eyes. "Go away," she snarled, in a voice as sharp as the edge of a blade.

"Why? Am I interrupting your pity party?"

Sunset growled wordlessly as she rounded upon her team leader, the fire turning red as the dancing flames rose higher all around her body. "Get out!"

Lightning Dust lounged against the far wall. She was playing with a knife, twirling it in her hands, as though it made her look cool and not like an idiot trying too hard to look cool.

"Now that I've got your attention," Lightning said, a smirk playing across her face.

Sunset took a deep breath. The flames wreathing her body refused to die down. She didn't want them to, not yet. "What do you want? Are you here to give me a team leader pep talk?"

Lightning Dust snorted. "No," she scoffed. "Who do you think you're talking to? I'm here to say I told you so."

Sunset's flames began to turn a little blue. "Are you?" she growled. "Are you really?"

"I knew that it was a bad idea, you hanging out with some first year, trying to mentor her, acting like you and she could…and for what? Even if she hadn't turned out to be a traitor to…whatever, what were you going to get out of it?"

"You wouldn't understand," Sunset said. She started to turn away.

"Did you want a friend?" Lightning asked.

"Shut up," Sunset said.

"Where you lonely?"

"I said shut up."

"Did you feel all alone with no one to-"

"I said SHUT UP!" Sunset roared, crossing the distance between the two of them to grab Lightning Dawn by the scruff of the neck and slam her into the wall hard enough to crack the stonework behind her. The flames had consumed her entire body now, her face hidden behind a white fire that burnt with the intensity of a star as her Phoenix Armour tore shreds of Lightning's aura.

But Lightning still did not look afraid. It was perhaps the one compliment that Sunset could pay the team leader she hadn't asked for: she'd never seen her scared, and that didn't change now as Sunset's flames ravaged her aura.

The mocking smirk on her face faded, but only to be replaced by a scowl as lightning rippled up and down her body, armouring her the way that Sunset's flames armoured her. Fire and lightning clashed, mingling together, the soft crackled of the flames contesting with the staccato snapping of the lightning, before Lightning discharged the bolts outwards from her body in a pulse that ripped Sunset off her, blasting her backwards across the locker room and into – appropriately enough – Cinder's old locker, doing even more damage to the twisted, shattered, broken door as she was hurled into it before sliding downwards onto the floor.

Lightning took a deep breath, and then another. She stared at Sunset with mingled anger and contempt in her gamboge eyes.

"Pull yourself together," she snapped. "I still need you for the Vytal Festival." She turned and walked away, slamming the locker room door behind her.

Sunset sat there, wreathed in flames, illuminating the room without the need for lights, sitting there and brooding upon all the things that she would do to Lightning Dust once the boot was on the other foot.

And all the things that she would do to Cinder Fall once she caught up with her.

I'm not entirely sure what I'll start with but I'll finish up with burning her remains to ashes.

I don't know what you're up to, Cinder, but you made a mistake to make an enemy of me.