BV 2.2 - Seven Days in Sunny June, Book II

Okay, now that I'm done with that detour through werewolf-ville, it's back to the main trilogy. Toward the end of 7DSJ book 1, Scilight is having nightmares starring the pony versions of herself, Sunset, and Octavia, along with Raspberry Beryl's "maximum edge" form. She appears to be generally losing her mind, including writing in blood on the bathroom walls and attempting suicide. Sunset finds a second mirror to Equestria, and goes through to find the source of this dark magic.

 

Sunset arrives in Ponyville, finds out about Beryl, and (for obvious reasons) assumes she's the bad guy. But since Beryl is in fact a 100% certified Good Person(TM), Sunset gets clobbered hard with the idiot ball to make sure everyone can tell that she's in the wrong here. So we get to see Sunset doing things like sneaking around in plain sight (her invisibility spell wore off and she didn't notice) and constructing elaborate conspiracy theories in which Beryl has brainwashed half of Equestria. Wonderful.

 

Sunset sees Beryl knock out Twilight while sparring and thinks it's an assassination attempt. (The author makes sure to point out that not only was it not an assassination attempt, it wasn't even Beryl's fault that Twilight got knocked out.) Anyway, the two get into a fight. Ms. Pure of Heart goes into a murderous rage ("loses control of her powers", it says), and just like last time, someone shows up at the last minute to keep her from actually killing Sunset.

 

Afterward, Twilight sticks Sunset and Beryl in a room together to talk things over. Beryl can't possibly be the bad guy, but there's been a bunch of blatant hints about her not being fully in control of her dark magic, so I'm sure that's related somehow.

 

At this point I apparently need to take another detour for more Beryl backstory, this time to a side fic called "How Great the Outcry", about Beryl returning to her old hometown. Fortunately, this one's only 18k, compared to 290k for that werewolf shit.

 

 

** No.22894624

I finished "How Great the Outcry". It was actually kind of good, which I found a bit surprising, given that the author's main fic appears to be an MLP / Red vs. Blue crossover.

 

Also, it explains the source of Scilight's nightmares, which turned out to be kind of disappointing: During a fight between Twilight and Beryl at the end of "Outcry", Beryl casts some mind magic at Twilight, who blocks the spell. This somehow causes it to transfer to Scilight instead. I assume the final explanation will involve some bullshit about vague spell targeting combined with them being in a pocket dimension at the time.