Long ago, in Canterlot...
Filly Sunset Shimmer stared at the egg. She concentrated, and slowly a pale blue aura started forming around her horn. She stared some more, watching, waiting as her magic glow grew bigger and brighter. One of the ponies marking her work yawned. Another looked at his watch. The last one sat there, admiring the beautiful Pheonix egg in front of her, paying little attention to the filly trying to hatch it. Nopony moved. No pony smiled. They just sat there. Waiting. In silence.
**Crack.* The mare watching the egg jumped as her peaceful moment enjoying its beauty ended. Lightning shaped cracks stretched along the egg as it broke. Crack. Sunset had her eyes closed in concentration, so she couldn't see the egg breaking, but she could hear it. Crack. The two half asleep judges woke up. Crack. Everypony's eyes widened as the inside of the egg glowed gold. Crack! The sound was getting louder. Sunset smiled. It was working. BOOM!*
There was a flash of golden light and a sound like an explosion. Sunset Shimmer's concentration broke with a burst of blue light. Bits of egg flew everywhere, and the egg obsessed judge grabbed a large peice of it in her magic, grinning. Sunset's parents were suddenly turned into a table and a chair. The room was a mess, but in the center, a large pheonix hovered, strangely glowing all colours of the rainbow. Before Sunset had any time to celebrate this accomplishment, there was a smaller flash of light, and her cutie mark appeared.
Sunset Shimmer woke up. In her bed. In her house. In the human world. Not in a classroom. Not at the School for Gifted Unicorns. Not in Equestria. It had been a dream. "Oh good!" She laughed as she got out of bed. "I would never want that to happen again! I got in so much trouble for turning my parents into furniture!" She got ready for school as she normally would, but she could not get the image of the magically-turned-rainbow pheonix out of her head.
When Sunset got to school, Principal Celestia made an announcement. "Tomorrow will be Bring Your Pet To School Day!" Most of the students were excited, and on her way to her next class, she heard bits of their conversations.
"Do you think I can bring my pet raccoon?"
"...Umm...you have a raccoon? Does it have some weird raccoon disease or something? If it does, they probably won't allow it!"
"Only joking! But do you think I can bring my Llama?" The voices trailed off as the kids walked away.
"Earth to Sunset! You there?" Rainbow Dash waved her hand in front of Sunset's face. Sunset jumped.
"What? Oh, yeah, I'm here..." She had been so lost in thought that she hadn't realized she was standing in front of her classroom.
"What's up?" continued Rainbow. "You look like your thinking about something." Sunset opened her mouth to explain-
"Are you thinking about Bring Your Pet To School Day, and how you can't bring your pet to school because it's it's a Pheonix called Philomena who lives in a different dimension, the same one Twilight's from, and you couldn't bring her with you because your got kicked out of that world and banished here and now she lives with your old teacher who's a princess and you miss her?" Pinkie Pie said this all very fast, in one sentence, without stopping.
Sunset stared at her. "How did you..."
"Just a hunch!" Pinkie bounced into the c
