Book one of "Who We Become".
Sunset always knew that she was destined for greatness, but she never dreamed of how great she could become. Not until she had seen it - the mirror had shown her as an alicorn. Ignoring Celestia's warnings, Sunset goes l...
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Christmas had come and gone, but the mall was still completely packed. People were running around to the different stores, eager to spend their new gift cards or return the presents that they'd only pretended to like. The crowd was far too large and far too noisy. Sunset would never have bothered to go to the mall around the holidays, but there were certain advantages to it.
But none of those advantages made it easier to find someone in the horde of shoppers. Checking the large clock in the food court showed that she was early anyway. With nothing to do but sit and wait, she began walking around the tables to find an empty one.
Spotting a place to sit, Sunset began to walk towards it but stopped when she saw someone waving. She almost hadn't noticed; there were lots of people around, and many of them were gesturing towards friends. But it just happened that the person waving was Applejack, and that Sunset would probably always be able to pick her out in a crowd.
Her first instinct was to just keep walking. Sunset wasn't there to meet with Applejack, so why waste time talking with her? But she thought better of it and gave a friendly wave back, shifting course to go to Applejack's table. She was sitting alone with just a soda in front of her, so it didn't look like she was in the middle of something that Sunset could get dragged into, and the meeting could easily be spun to Sunset's benefit.
"Hey there, Sunset. How's it going?"
"Applejack," Sunset said with a friendly nod. She took a seat across from the other girl. "I'm doing alright. Just waiting for someone."
"Me too," Applejack said. After finishing their project and leaving the library the week before, Sunset had taken Applejack up on her offer to go to Sugarcube Corner. It had been an uncharacteristic move for her, and she spent the whole night trying to figure out what her motivation had been. She hadn't come up with satisfactory answer. She told herself that it was only one day, that things would go back to normal at school in the morning, but they hadn't. Applejack had forgotten her promise to find another seat in class, once again sitting next to Sunset. That was bad, but not unexpected. What was unexpected was that Sunset was kind of happy about it.
She told herself that she needed to distance herself from Applejack. Nothing good could possibly come from them growing any closer. "So how was your Christmas?" Sunset asked. Of course, this meeting didn't count. Sunset was using this for her own gain, which made it completely justified.
"It was okay. It's kinda been a while since I really enjoyed family holidays, though." Thankfully, Applejack decided not to elaborate on what she meant by that, and instead just shrugged off the potentially awkward conversation. "What about you?"
"Eh, I never really liked family holidays." Sunset smirked. "Or any other holidays for that matter."
Applejack chuckled. "Yeah, I figured that would be the case. So then, any other big plans for the break?"
Sunset shrugged. "No, not really. I'm mostly just trying to stay out of the snow."
"I hear ya. Why, just the other day someone went and started throwing snowballs at me for no reason."
