Sunset Shimmer stepped into her tiny apartment, and closed the door.

She was weary from the day. Another six hours spent at school, learning facts that -- while inherently interesting, exposing her as they did to an alien culture and a technology in advance of her home world -- would hopefully be mostly useless to her, as she very much meant to return to that home in triumph. Or, simply, return.

She had lived now for almost four years, as time passed on this side of the Mirror Portal -- some fourteen back in Equestria, as nearly as she could estimate. Lived, as best she could, among these belligerent, semi-barbaric ape-creatures, trapped in a brutish apelike analogue of her true form, forced to pretend to be one of them.

Three years. Three years, isolated from her own kind, from real civilization. Oh, the ape-things were clever -- bereft of magic, they had instead developed ordinary technologies to high degrees, able to do almost everything with their mundane arts that Equestrians could do with their magical ones, and a few things which Equestrians yet couldn't.

But -- they were beasts -- cruel and callous and uncaring to one another by Equestrian standards, willing to resort to physical violence at the slightest of causes. She had perused their histories with mounting horror. There had been so much death and destruction, so many wars, so much hatred, despite the fact that they were all of the same species, even the same Kind.

This was clearly a race that knew not the Harmony in their hearts, even though they were groping toward it, had even developed philosophies which anticipated those of Equestria. Perhaps, centuries from now, they might become civilized; but Sunset Shimmer had to live amongst them now, struggle for survival among creatures that -- she knew well from their own books -- would turn upon her and rend her asunder in an instant if they knew she was an alien.

She always remembered that she had one great advantage over them. She was an Equestrian Pony, and one of exceptional determination and intelligence. A gentlemare, born of the ancient and honorable Light clan, possessing a civilized courage that could overcome any barbaric bravado. A gentlemare of a military family, a family of scholar-soldiers and scholar-mages, skilled at outfighting and outwitting their foes.

She needed money, and was relieved when she realized that some coins and costume jewelry she'd brought along in her saddlebags were immensely-valuable in a culture which seemed not to have developed any analogue of petriculture, but was instead limited to hunting and gathering metals and gems as they occurred naturally in the ground. She figured out how to trade the gems for local currency, an action not as easy here as it would have been in Equestria, given the aggressiveness and greed of the ape-creatures, which exposed her to a grave risk of robbery; and their drive to dominate, which led their government to meddle in ordinary economic affairs to a degree which would have shocked most Equestrians.

She spent some of the money to acquire several sets of identification, one of which was even under the Human-language equivalent of her real name. When she had first come here, she had been fifteen years old, and her Human body could pass for anywhere between around fourteen and twenty-two, depending on how she dressed and carried herself. She saw the advantages of both ends of the age spectrum, and her various identifications listed her as various ages.

She studied the culture -- especially the teen culture -- of the North American Federation. And she spent some more of the money to look, superficially, like a high-status teenaged girl. She wanted to look dangerous without seeming evil, exciting without seeming trashy. She had never been all that fashionable back in Equestria, but she analyzed the problem, treating it as if it were a problem assigned by ... back before her life had gone wrong.

She needed to be at Canterlot High School, because that was where the Mirror Portal was located, and for as long as possible, because she wasn't sure when she could figure out how to get home on favorable terms. So she enrolled, in her fourteen-year-old identity, as a freshman. She figured this would give her plenty of time to study the Mirror Portal,

The Humans were brutal, cruel and treacherous, that was true. But what they imagined their strength might also be their weakness. Long, long ago the vanished and legendary North-Realm, a high and noble civilization, had survived surrounded by barbarians -- including Sunset Shimmer's own less-civilized ancestors -- survived by turning the barbarians against each other.

They had even a phrase for it. Divide et imperio. Or, in modern Equestrian, Divide and rule.

Sunset Shimmer made this her watchword.

She was skilled in the social arts of a culture far beyond these techno-barbarians in everything but the hard sciences. She had never been all that sociable, nor did she have much desire to be sociable with these jumped-up animals -- that simply meant it was easier, because it helped her think of them not as people, but rather as resources to be used. Problems to be solved.

Raised in Canterlot, she had imbibed the arts of intrigue as if by osmosis; studied sociology and history under the tutelage of a multi-millennial super-intelligent immortal demi-goddess, herself the greatest social manipulator ever born to Ponykind. Compared to her, the students of an elite Human high school were, frankly, just so many foals lost in the woods.

So she turned one barbarian ape-thing against another, tricking them into blaming each other for these ruptures. At the same time, she established her own status, one display of alliance or victory in confrontation at a time, climbing the ape-thing social ladder, one success at a time.

It never would have worked in Equestria; herds of tight-knit friends would have spotted what she was doing and turned the greater herd against her. But the Humans were far less social beings than were Ponies. Her targets were easy to isolate and bring down, one after another.

Sunset had always been rather ruthless by Equestrian standards. She was certain this had been one of the reasons Princess Celestia had selected her as her special student, had picked her as her possible ... but that still hurt every time that she thought about it. Whatever Celestia's intentions once had been, surely they were no longer; anything Sunset now won she would have to gain by her own unaided enterprise.

So she stood victorious, atop the social pyramid of the students of Canterlot High School. The acknowledged Princess of her own little Realm, a mockery of what she had once hoped to achieve. Dominant ... victorious ... and alone, all the more so when she was surrounded by the apes, for it was only by constant vigilance and willingness to act decisively that she was able to maintain her advantage over them.

She looked around her little apartment. It was a studio: essentially a single large room which contained her bed, sofa, television, computer, and bookcases. Lots of bookcases, full of books, almost all of which she had read. She was a natural scholar, and she had spent most of the last four years drinking in the lore of this strange new world. It was the one real consolation of her exile.

Against one wall, near a curtained window, was her small single bed. It did not to be large: it was not as if Sunset had, or ever would have, anyone with whom to share it. She had still been a child when she had become Celestia's student; she had been in mid-adolescence when she had rebelled and fled to the Human world. As Celestia's student, she had had no time to make friends or fall in love, nor would she have been likely to give herself to a stallion at such a young age.

So she had entered this world virgin, and of course, here there were no Pony stallions whom she might meet. Human males were ape-things, not Ponies, and most of them repulsive in the shameless aggression of their sexual lusts. She dated some, to establish her status as a girl who could get dates, and became adept at fending off their clumsy advances. The thought of actual sexual intimacy with them revolted her. They were disgusting beasts!

Or ... most of them were.

Author's Note

What, you're surprised that Sunset is bigoted against the Humans? Consider how she treats them, in the original Equestria Girls movies. It's only after she is defeated -- realizes she won't come back to Equestria in triumph -- and the Humane Five are willing to be friendly toward her, that she is able to grasp that the Humans are not the cruel brutes she has imagined, and that she has treated them cruelly.