From sunset to sunrise

by Yet another time lord

Rating: everyone
Tags: Sad, Main 6, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sunset Shimmer, Slice of Life, Dark, Alternate Universe, Human
Length: 4121

Fall from grace,outcast and lost in an alien world with all her dreams of glory shattered,how did Sunset Shimmer became the monster we saw in the first EG,the answer may not be as clear as it seems

My first atempt at a story and actually a prequel to Goodnight Sunset as I've seen a lot of stories about Sunset before coming to the human world or after the fall formal yet a very short amount of them about her time in the human world and how she adapted to such a different world from her own.

Published 2015-07-15 23:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2015-09-16 03:10:03 UTC

1- A brave new world

Run, get away before it's too late. This where the words rushing in Sunset Shimmer mind as she charged blindly trough the magic mirror not knowing what will be expecting her on the other side, as her body made contact with the icy surface a void formed in the pit of her stomach as she fell in a kaleidoscope of colors to an unknown destination. Her body felt like jello as it twisted and turned before throwing her out on the other side, the momentum with which she had entered hadn't dissipated in the slightest making her collide face first against the ground; still shocked by the experience she tried to get her bearings only to realise that the mirror had turned her in some sort of deformed creature, she couldn't suppress a yell when she first saw that her hooves had lost their cylindrical form and taken an ape like appearance with five appendices sprouting from a plane central surface,her saddle had suffered a similar fate turning itself into some sort of big pouch strapped to her back with the few things she had been able to collect before running away. To make maters worse she could feel the first drops of rain starting to fall on her face, she scrambled to move but hard as she tried she couldn't manage to move correctly in all fours since her forward limbs where shorter making for an awkward trot as she ran for cover in what seemed to be an educational facility. She barely made it to the entrance before the rain started falling full force,seeing that she wasn't going anywhere soon Sunset took the moment to breath as she fought to make sense out of all the mess.

When Celestia had first showed the mirror to her she had said that it was a portal to an alternative dimension that it only opened every 30 moons, but when Sunset picked into the mirror she had only seen her greatest dream came true,she had seen herself as an alicorn princess elevated to the same level of her teacher. From that day on this idea has consumed her, inspiring Sunset to push herself even harder eager to prove that she was worthy in the eyes of Celestia; but no matter how hard she tried her teacher always repeated the same words ''you are not ready yet'' saying that she would become a princess in time when she had learned all that she had to learn to be a ruler and this frustrated Sunset to no end, not only because she felt that Celestia was holding her back but also because more and more of her lessons with her where less about ruling and more about making friends and other such nonsense for which Sunset had not the time nor the desire to pursue; this in turn strained her relationship with the princess as her bitterness and discontent grew with the days. The breaking point however came unexpectedly in the form of a pink alicorn by the name of Mi amore cadenza who simply appeared one day by Celestia side presenting herself as her niece despite the fact that Sunset knew that the princess was the only living alicorn in existence.

She confronted Celestia with anger but all that she could pry out of her was that this "cadance" had "earned" her ascension into an alicorn by learning about 'the magic of love', after all the years they have spent together since the princess had adopted her Sunset couldn't believe that Celestia will not only betray her in such a horrible manner but also lie to her so openly, "the magic of love,what a lode of horseapples"- thought Sunset while she ran away from the princess biting back tears of pain and anger,in that moment she understood that no matter how much she pushed herself it will never be enough for the princess.

It had all gone downhill from there,desperate decision after desperate decision had all finally came crashing down to that point ,and now here she was cold,alone and with no idea of where she was or what she was, "it doesn't matter, as long as I have my magic I don't need anything else. I would show the princess and then she will be begin for me to come back"; she said with a shaky voice as she tried to use her magic to warm herself against the cold winter night. Sunet tried to calm herself as she opened her mind to the embrace of magic, yet the familiar sensation of the arcane energies were nowhere to be found replaced by an empty void that she had never encountered before. Sunset tried to stop the panic raising in her mind as she did some breathing exercises and closed her eyes trying to convince herself that the trip must had messed up her magical sense and that she only needed time to recover, but as minutes passed a horrible revelation started to sink in Sunset Shimmer mind;this world didn't had any magic at all.

Before she could get a hold of herself she started having a panic attack, trying in vain to calm her raging heart she tried to control her breath before she hyperventelitaded; in the end it was too much to her and she ended up collapsing in the ground while her body shaken as she finally cried her heart out unable to find even the smallest bit of reassurance, for the first time in her life Sunset Shimmer had absolutely nothing left to lose.

She didn't know how much time she stood there just crying as the pain and the anger burned hot within her body while the cold of the outside treatened to freeze her solid where she stood. Sunset couldn't remember the last time she had lost her self-control in such a way and it looked like all the tears she hadn't shed in the past were flowing now like a waterfall, she suddenly felt something touching her and as she tried to fight back the tears she could see a face trough her watered eyes, "are you alright?". Asked an evidently masculine voice with a certain tone of worry.

"Do I look like I'm okay"; lashed out Sunset while she took a cautious stand whipping away the tears and putting a cold expression as she inspected her will be helper. A male,not older than a teen by the looks of it with blue hair and an orange taint in her skin was offering her his hoof to stand up,even when she was completely new to this world and his inhabitants(who she supposed where this weird monkey like creatures in which she had transformed) she could still recognize a tool when she saw one; everything from his pose to his smile and his clothes(which sunset just now noticed that she had as well) speaked of a kid who wanted to be a goody two shoes to any mare(or monkey female in this case), pathetic as it was Sunset couldn't deny that she needed help and if this one was offering himself freely well she wasn't going to look a gifted pony in the teeth.

She took his hoof and got up while dusting off her clothes,she may not be a fan of them but for what she could see she was going to need them, "Sunset shimmer sorry that I lashed out to you.I was kind of scared" ; she said while baiting her eyelashes and playing her role as a damsel in distress and as she expected the chum took the bait.

"Flash sentry and don't worry you look like you have been trough a lot recently"; he said maybe a tad too eager to be of help to this total estranger, maybe he was just that much of a nice pony like many of the citizens of her home world or maybe like so many stallions she had known he was simply willing to do anything for a cute face. The reason eluded Sunset for the moment but whatever the case she still followed him away from the mirror and towards the city.

While they walked under his umbrella to shelter themselves from the rain Sunset used that moment to learn all that she could about that world, she pretended to be a foreigner so she wouldn't come out as some sort of lunatic making questions about the name of the city and such ; she still had to hide her surprise when they used some sort of horseless carriage to transport themselves from one place to another but even with this setbacks she managed to learn a great deal about the city of Canterlot and the so called "Canterlot high school" that was the place where Flash sentry had found her crying her heart out. Sunset then fell silent as she started hatching a plan for he triumphant return to equestria, she needed to be close to the portal when it finally opened once more and she had the lingering suspect that maybe magic wasn't as dead in this world as she had originally thought, after all the carriage she was on was moving without any kind of visible force behind it, she needed to learn more and the school was the perfect place to do just that.

After a short ride they finally stopped in a two storey house of soft brown colors surrounded by others of similar shape and color. When they exited the horseless carriage Sunset got what was probably her fifteenth nasty surprise of the night as she saw flash handing the driver some estrange green papers that had numbers printed of them, judging by the faces in the papers and the exchange between the two it wasn't hard to see that it was currency and just with her luck they were completely different to the bits and gems she had in her saddle assuming they even still existed inside the weird thing she had strapped to her back, she followed flash inside the house relieved to be out of the rain at least for the moment, the place itself seemed to be empty except for them and all kind of strange artifacts were scattered trough the rooms, one of such was a strange mirror like object that occupied a central position in what she assumed was the living room, it had an alien and sleak appearance with its black borders and cables connected to them like some sort of mechanical organ. Flash seemed to notice Sunset interest in it, " you like it? My dad got it last week to watch the Superbowl"- cockiness dripping in his voice as he used a strange rod like object pointing at the black mirror. Like some kind of magic the mirror emitted a strange light and started showing all kind of strange images and sounds, it was obvious by the look of it that many of the places depicted where far away lands yet the boy acted like if was nothing out of the ordinary,evidently Sunset had come to the right place to find the magic she needed after all or so she thought at the time.

Author's Note

Well thanks to everybody who decided to give this a chance ,thanks to Twilight Nightmare for leting me use her particular take on Sunset Shimmer to write this fic as well as inspiring me to give it a shot at writting. As you can probably see English is not my native language so if anybody would be willing to profread future episodes I will really apreciate it,also don't worry I know this is kind of short but I will try to make the chapters longer in the future

2-Stranger in a strange land

The dawn came way too quickly for Sunset tastes, after an awkward night of pizza and making a complete fool out of herself with Flash sentry the last thing she needed was some awkward breakfast with his parents that were either going to make her a lot of questions for which she didn't had an answer for or where going to berate his son for bringing home a complete stranger before calling the police to arrest her or even worse. The televisión (as flash had called their extrange scrying device) had proven to be a great tool for acquiring a lot of information about this new world, including the fact that apparently in this reality "people" as this monkeys fancied calling themselves were so similar to one another that they had a whole system in place to keep récord of each and every one of them and failing to produce such documents resulted in either arrest or exile( the exact reason of why this creatures had divided themselves in such a way despite being of the same species remained a mystery for her).

Looking back on it Sunset could have managed this revelation with a bit more of subtlety than just running to the bathroom and start tearing through the content of her saddlebag wishing in vain that the crystal mirror had somehow produced the documents out of thin air as it had done with her clothes, luck however was not on her side this time and all her frantic search accomplished was to make Flash sentry come check on her,perhaps worried about her behaviour, " Sunset are you alright in there?" Asked the boy while knocking tentatively at the door.

" I'm fine I just really needed to use the bathroom" she said in her best attempt at a calm tone while a million of possible scenarios ran through her mind none of them pleasing. At first the idea of using the mirror had seemed like a no brainer,after all if it showed Sunset her future as an alicorn princess it only stands to reason that it will also take her to the place where she will acquire such power, but now ascension was the last thing in her mind compared to the idea that if anybody discovered that she was not from that world only Celestia knew what they would do to her and Sunset was not planning to stick around to find out, after all if she was exiled she would lose her way back to equestria. Gratefully she had at least ran to the bathroom so that hot shower she so desperately needed was at least easy to come by.

One shower latter Sunset was feeling a lot more positive about her chances that she had been before it, sure she got no money, no magic and absolutely no one she could turn for help but that wasn't exactly an unknown situación for her( even when she had tried her best to forget it); after her small panic attack she still had to talk to Flash sentry to assure him that she was alright while trying to figure out if he suspected something was amiss about her, as luck has it the guy turned out to be as much of a chump as he appeared on the outside, not only he didn't suspect anything but he even gave her his bed to spend the night. She lay down thinking that after such a long day she would snooze as soon as hit the pillow but her mind seemed to have a different idea as it kept playing the events of the last few days stubbornly refusing to let go of them.

At first it hadn't looked so terrible, sure summoning the mare in the moon hadn't been Sunset's brightest idea but after what happened with Cadance she was really desperate for some way of getting what the princess kept denying to her; the spell itself had been easy, some herbs a few magical arranges and just a little bit of her blood to finish it all off, Celestia could never know but for all that the princess had told her about dark magic she almost had hoped this will be either more complicated or more blood chilling, yet it had been simple almost to the point where she had feared it wouldn't work until an alicorn of shadows and smoke finally appeared within the circle,it didn't have any distinguishable features to the point that it looked more like the reflection of a pony than a creature of flesh and blood,"who are thou that dares to interrupt my slumber?". The creature asked with a booming voice that would had gave her away if Sunset hadn't put a noise cancellation spell.

Sunset had the whole thing planned in her mind about how she was going to pry the secret of ascension out of Nightmare moon yet now that she was face to face with the creature all the alarms in her head were ringing telling her to turn flank and go never to return,yet she meet the creature gaze swallowing the lump in her throat, " I'm Sunset shimmer and I demand that you give me the secret of ascension "; she said trying to sound more brave that she actually felt. The mare of shadows however didn't look very impressed by her bravado although it was hard to read any emotion in a face that was little more than a black hole.

"And what makes you think that I would give that information to an unworthy vermin like you?". Asked the voice while her empty face splitted with a mouth full of sharp teeths that looked more than willing to snap Sunset in two.

The answer hitted her like a ton of brick making Sunset doubt her own ears as she made a mental checklist of the spell, "wrong this is all wrong it wasn't supposed to be like this", she thought while scrambling to get her wit back together; "I summoned you here and binded you, I demand that you give me what is mine". Sunset stomped her hoof trying to look as determined as possible, she had already been denied by Celestia and she wouldn't stand for it again even if it meant standing out to Nightmare moon.

"Stupid little foal", the mare hissed while her features keep changing becoming more and more like those of an actual alicorn; a pair of turquoise eyes slitted like those of a reptile scoured Sunset with such an intensity that she backed away fearing that the creature could release herself of the circle and swallow her up as the stories told, "do not take me for a mere demon that you can summon and order at your leisure, I'm equestria true queen", she roared as her midnight blue armor took shape finally revealing the form that all of equestria knew.

Taken aback by this Sunset had bowed out of pure fear looking for a way to terminate the spell before Nightmare moon could do well of her treat , "but still a queen needs subjects and one who has willingly came to me deserves to be rewarded", continued the mare while looking Sunset up and down as if was evaluating her potential, "you have promise young unicorn,serve me and your heart's desire will be yours". Nightmare moon severed a piece of her ethereal mane while saying this words and offered it to Sunset who just then dared to lift her face from the ground, "this spirit will show you the way to that which you desire,in return your emotions will be his to feed"; she finalized while extending her hoof to the limit of the circle.

At first she had been terrified,but now only the promises filled Sunset mind,there in front of her was the power she had so desperately wanted,it meant serving Nightmare moon but she couldn't care less,after all she was the smartest unicorn there was,once she had gotten what she wanted she will have no problem going back on her word, " yes anything,I will pay any price". Sunset extended her hoof while speaking mesmerised by the possibilities just within her grasp, but as soon as she finished speaking the extrange shadow coiled like a serpent and took her, penetrating her body through her eyes and mouth living a foul taste and a nauseous feeling of drowning;but none of that matter because she had the power she needed now and nobody was going to stop her.

She had believed that at the time, drunk with the power of the nightmare she had became even more obsessive in her quest. What little social life she had maintained to keep Celestia off her back practically vanished overnight as she became more and more sure of her destiny while the voice whispered in her ear filling her with power and determination; in the end she became reckless and when the princess found her dibling into black magic Sunset confronted her head on demanding to be given what was rightfully hers only to be disowned by Celestia and forced to abandon the castle that same night.

After all that she had done it had been carelessness that drove her to this strange world and Sunset was nothing but a smart mare, she wasn't going to repeat the same mistake again.

Before the crack of dawn she was up the next day with a single idea in her mind, she needed fake documents if she was to have any hope of blending with the locals and if this canterlot was anything like the one she came from she knew exactly where she needed to go, by the time Flash got into the room all that was left was an open window and a rope made of sheets strapped to one of the bed posts. While she made her hash retreat Sunset couldn't avoid the thought that maybe this was more of a giveaway than any half baked story she could have come up to why she didn't have any papers but she rather not take that chance, after all she was probably never going to see that guy again.

The streets were quiet this early in the morning. Sunset footsteps sounded like shots on the hard surface of the street while she tried to match her own knowledge of the city with the layout of this strange doppelganger, she followed the soft curve of it praying that it would take her to the canter river if such a landmark even existed in this world. After an hour of nervous walking she finally managed to get a more panoramic look of the city with the silver line of the river shining in the distance.

It took her the better half of three hours but she managed to get to a bridge where she finally collapsed breathing heavily under the exertion, her feets hurt and even when she hadn't been the most athletic unicorn in the world it was clear that this new body was a lot less sturdy than her original one, "at least I'm getting used to walking with these"; Sunset thought although it wasn't much of a consolation.

Canter river ran slow and strong dividing Canterlot upper district from it least fortunate zone, that bit seemed to be equal in this alternate world and it was here that she would find what she was looking for, "a life of running away and now I'm back at the slums"; Sunset thought with a dry smile while she started walking through the shady part of the city.

As she made her way through the dark streets Sunset couldn't avoid a certain feeling of apprehension as the memories of her fillyhood rushed back while she walked familiar yet completely alien streets, it didn't take long for he to find was she was looking for in the form of a pawn shop with a bright colored sign announcing they bought gold.

Once inside in what was her first struck of luck since coming to this cursed place Sunset discovered that the shop also offered a "prank ID" service, after that it was almost child's play to convince the teen in the register to not only take her bits and exchange them but also give her an ID that will at least help her for the time being.

She exited the place with a smile knowing that soon she will have the means to take back what should have been hers all along.

Author's Note

Well the second chapter is finally here, I'm sorry it took so long but I'm really making this as I go but the good news is that now with google docs I'll at least keep the worst of my grammar at bay so enjoy and I'll try to have the next chapter ready as soon as I can