As the Sun Sets

Sunset lay back that night in wonder, staring at the sloping underside of the stairs that formed the roof of her bedroom. The wooden walls let the warmth from the main hearth seep into her room, keeping her nice and toasty beneath the furs of her blankets. The rattling of the walls against Stoick’s snoring at the other side of the hall was more amusing than anything else. Instead, what kept Sunset awake into the dark hours of the night… was worry.

She wasn’t worried for her safety - the people of Berk had been very kind to her after their initial bout of suspicion, which she could hardly blame them for. She was a stranger in their home that had appeared out of nowhere through unknown methods and no way of getting home. If anything, she was lucky they hadn’t decided to just set her adrift on an old longboat and be done with her.

No, Sunset spent her night thinking of home. She thought of her friends that she may never see again, of Princess Twilight fretting over the glitching Mirror Portal to try and find her, of what her own Twilight was going through on her side of the rift. Had Princess Twilight managed to contact her friends, did they know what had happened?

Letting out a long, dejected sigh, Sunset rolled over, staring instead at the wall. It probably wouldn’t do her any good to dwell on things too much. She could trust Princess Twilight… right? Of course she could. She’d know something was wrong… right?

Sunset sighed again. She needed to sleep, or she’d be exhausted for whatever she was asked to do the next day. Closing her eyes, she fell into the practice that had gotten her through so many nights when she’d first ran from Celestia - she pretended to sleep until her body was fooled.

The sound of shattering glass had her eyes snap open once again, however. Berk didn’t have any glass - she wasn’t entirely sure the residents had the knowledge to make it. So that could only mean one thing.

Whoever had made that sound, they weren’t from Berk.

Sunset scrambled out of the mountain of furs that was her bedding, shivering violently at the rush of cold air that hit her body like a semi truck. She scrambled to pull her clothes on - beginning with the underclothes that Mrs. Ingermann had provided her to combat the Berkian winds. As unflattering as the full-body fabrics were, she was thankful for them.

Moving quickly and carefully, Sunset peeked out of her makeshift bedroom, looking back and forth in the main room of the hall. Stoick’s bedchambers sat towards the back, his walls still rattling violently as the giant of a man snored away. Clearly he hadn’t heard anything.

Sneaking out of her room and along the side of the staircase, Sunset froze. A dark shape was moving ahead of her, creeping down the stairs towards the front door just the same as her.

“Hiccup?” Sunset whispered, watching as the shadowed shape seemed to leap a mile into the air before turning to her.

“Sunset?” Hiccup muttered in shock before squinting at her. “What are you doing up?”

“Probably the same as you,” she shot back with a knowing smirk, chuckling as Hiccup’s face erupted in a bright red blush. “I heard something outside. I’m guessing you’re going to check it out too?”

Clearing his throat awkwardly, Hiccup nodded in response. “It could be dangerous,” he pointed out.

“I can take care of myself,” Sunset replied simply.

Seemingly satisfied with her answer, Hiccup nodded before turning to lead the way out of the hall. Sunset followed close behind, taking a breath to steel herself as the doors opened and the frigid winds hit her head-on.

Creeping out and around the hall, Hiccup taking point as Sunset hung back, the pair scanned their surroundings fervently. As much as Sunset hoped beyond hope that Twilight had found a way to get her home, she knew there were other dangers on Berk to be aware of - their reaction to her arrival was clear enough.

Hiccup paused at the corner of the hall, holding his hand up to stop her, and Sunset crowded in behind him to try and get a better look. Together they slowly leaned around the corner, gasping at what they saw.

A dark figure knelt at the side of the hall, muttering to himself as he seemed to be scooping something up from the ground that glittered in the moonlight. Sunset had to squint to see the figure - he seemed as dark as the night around him, somehow, and the lack of any light other than the moon itself only served to drape him in more darkness.

“Stupid fairies…” the figure muttered as it scooped the last of what Sunset could only guess was shattered glass up off the ground. “You take them through ONE portal and they freak out on you…”

Sunset heard Hiccup gasp, ducking back around the corner as the young man clapped a hand to his mouth. Pressing their backs to the wall of the hall, they both held their breaths, waiting to see if the figure had noticed them.

Moments passed, and as Sunset and Hiccup glanced at one another, Sunset took the risk and leaned out to peek at the figure again… only to leap back as a pair of piercing red eyes bore into her own.

“Gah!”

“Hello there,” the figure said quietly, staring at her before turning to regard Hiccup coldly. “Hmm… I wonder which of you is the Displaced one…” he muttered before offering Sunset a hand. “May I help you up?”

Sunset stared at him for a moment before slowly taking his hand, yelping as he pulled her up with surprising strength. Stumbling slightly, Sunset quickly got her feet under her before coughing awkwardly into her fist. “Thanks,” she offered, brushing her skirt off. “Um… who are you?”

“I’d like to know that, too,” Hiccup spoke up, clearly trying to stand as tall as he could to make an impression on the stranger. “You don’t seem like an invader, but you are a stranger in my village and that’s something I have to address.”

The stranger looked between the two, piercing red eyes boring into them both, before sighing. Reaching up, he pulled the long, dark cap off his head before running a hand through his snow-white hair. “Alright,” he said eventually, pulling the cap onto his head once more. “Well, you can call me Xerox. Looks to me like you’ve not heard of the Displaced, so it falls on me to explain this steaming pile of dragon dung to you, which should be fun.”

Sunset and Hiccup shared a glance, Sunset’s eyes widening in surprise as Hiccup frowned suspiciously.

“What’s a Displaced?” Sunset asked.

“What do you know about the Dragons?” Hiccup added moments later.

Xerox looked between the two for a moment before seeming to nod to himself. “Well that clears that up…” he muttered. “You’re the Displaced,” he continued, pointing to Sunset before glancing to Hiccup. “And this is your World. Easy enough. Also, I don’t know anything about your dragons, but I’ve dealt with a few where I’m from, so it’s just a phrase I use.”

Hiccup watched Xerox suspiciously, but seemed to relent, nodding slightly. Sunset took this as a good sign that he wasn’t going to raise the alarms, since this person seemed to have answers that might help her - the last thing she needed was the whole Village bearing down on him with axe and sword.

“Anyway,” Xerox continued, clapping his hands together suddenly to bring attention back to himself. When Sunset and Hiccup were focused on him, he nodded. “Do you have anywhere we can sit while we talk? As much as I’m enjoying the night air, it's freezing out here.”

Blinking slightly, Sunset turned to Hiccup, who remained silent for a moment before nodding. “Follow me,” he said simply, turning and leading the way down a stone-lined pathway away from the hall. Xerox fell into step behind the small Viking, and Sunset brought up the rear, silently thanking Celestia herself that things seemed to be going so smoothly for her.

Hiccup eventually led the group down to a secluded beach at the bottom of the Berkian cliffs and into a small cavern, protected by the strong winds and kept dry by a line of large stones set up in the sands.

“The tides are low at the moment,” Hiccup explained casually as he opened a small alcove in the cavern walls and began pulling pieces of firewood out, setting them into a basin in the center of the ‘room’. “So sometimes I come down here to think, when I want to be alone. Now, you were going to explain?” He glanced pointedly to Xerox as he said this, kneeling down with a knife and stone to try and spark the flames.

“Allow me,” Xerox offered, pointing his fore- and middle-fingers at the wood and taking a breath. A spark of fire leapt from his fingertips, catching on the wood before settling into a comforting campfire.

Hiccup stared bug-eyed at the blaze before looking up to Xerox, seemingly taking him in completely for a moment. “Odin’s Beard…” he breathed out after a moment, seemingly in awe.

Xerox simply chuckled as he crouched down to sit atop a stone at the side of the fire. “Not quite,” he said dismissively. “Don’t start worshipping me as some kind of God now? I just know a little Magic, that’s all.”

Sunset’s eyes widened at the sight, her mind racing at a mile a minute. This person knew how to use Magic too!? Maybe he was from another world… and it definitely wasn’t hers. She’d never heard of a shadowed man like this in Equestria.

“Let’s start at the beginning then, yes?” Xerox began, sitting back and steepling his fingers as he seemed to think of how to begin. Sunset found herself leaning forward in anticipation, an action she noticed Hiccup mirroring in earnest.

“Now, I come from another world, one that it looks like is not a mirror of this one, which is an interesting change,” the dark-skinned man began. “Where I come from is called Equestria, and I stay with a duo of mares in a small town named Ponyville.”

Sunset frowned in confusion. “You can’t be from Equestria,” she cut in. “I’ve never heard of anything like you before.”

Raising his brow silently, Xerox stared at Sunset for until the girl swallowed nervously before answering. “There are multiple versions of certain worlds,” he said simply. “My Equestria would be different from the one I assume you hail from.” Pausing, Xerox waited for Sunset to nod slowly before continuing. “Now, as I was saying, sometimes individuals get moved from one world to another, for whatever reason, and become stuck there. I don’t personally know if there’s any way to get back when this happens.”

Sunset sat back as Xerox’s words sank in, her hopes sinking to the bottom of her stomach. No known way home? Did that mean she was stuck here, forever?

“So how did you get here then?” Hiccup asked, breaking Sunset out of her internal spiral as she tuned back into the conversation. “Surely there’s not some sort of gateway between your world and ours, especially not one that’s been hidden for this long.”

Xerox shook his head, smiling. “You’re a smart one,” he praised casually before answering the young heir’s question. “No, there’s no standard gateway. Displaced can be called to one another’s worlds using Tokens, or sometimes we get pulled across through our own means when our help is needed. You could think of the Multiverse as moving around, sometimes the different realities come closer together and link together. I’m assuming something thought you could use my help to understand your situation better, Sunset.”

Taking a deep breath to calm herself, Sunset turned the information over in her mind before speaking. “So let me get this straight,” she began eventually. “Through some kind of cosmic forces out of our control, I got taken from my home, thrown onto Berk, and now I’m stuck here for who knows how long because nobody knows how I can get home?”

Xerox simply shrugged. “I’m sure somebody knows how,” he offered. “There’s hundreds, possibly thousands of Displaced in the Multiverse. At least one of them likely figured something out. As for me, I neither know nor care about getting home - I left of my own free will.”

Hiccup spoke up suddenly, curiosity and confusion on his face. “Why would you want to leave your own homeworld?” he asked.

Again, Xerox shrugged. “In all technicality, I’m not a person - I’m a reflection of a person, made manifest by the magic of the Heavens of my world to test the Destined Hero whenever needed. Said Hero was trapped in a reincarnation curse along with the Princess of Wisdom and Evil Incarnate, and I got tired of that cycle, so when I got my chance, I left.”

Silence fell on the cavern as Sunset and Hiccup processed Xerox’s words. “You…” Sunset began, blinking rapidly. “You… left? Just like that?”

Xerox sighed as he leaned forward, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It wasn’t as simple as that, but… yes. Certain actions and events also helped.”

“So how does all this help Sunset?” Hiccup asked pointedly. “Not to be rude, but your backstory doesn’t seem to be much help in our situation.”

Nodding, Xerox sat back again. “Right, well, one of the… I suppose you could call it a benefit, of being Displaced, is that you can call upon and be called by other Displaced for help. All you need is a Token, an item important or representative of you, to send out for others to find.”

“All I have anymore is my clothes,” Sunset pointed out with a dejected sigh. “I wasn’t exactly planning on coming here at the time.”

“You don’t have to do anything right now,” Xerox pointed out. “You may find something in the future that represents you best, or you may even be able to make something. But you should have a natural ability to toss your Token out into the Void just by thinking about it - just make sure you push your energy into it before.”

Sunset blinked slowly before smiling. “Oh, it's like a Find-Me Crystal!” she said suddenly, chuckling. “That should be easy then! And here I was worrying about whether I could do things or not.”

Xerox simply smiled, giving a nod before seeming to get distracted as a small, glowing orb zipped into the cavern. “There you are!” he cried suddenly, leaping to his feet and clasping his hands around the light. “I was worried what would happen if I had to leave a Fairy here.”

Hiccup’s eyes bugged out as he scrambled backwards in panic. “F-fairy!?” he cried out, trembling at the thought. “You brought a Fairy to Berk!?”

Sunset and Xerox shared a look before staring at Hiccup in surprise, the dark-skinned visitor slowly reaching to a pouch at his belt and producing an empty bottle, into which he deposited the fairy before trapping it with a cork stopper. As Hiccup let out a sigh of relief, Xerox raised a brow questioningly.

“Do I even want to know what Fairies can do in this world?” he asked, stowing his bottled fairy away once again. “Y’know what? No, no I don’t.”

Nodding in silent agreement, Sunset instead turned to Xerox. “So, is there anything else I should know?” she asked, blinking as the interdimensional visitor just shrugged in response. “Oh… then, um… how will you get home?”

“No idea,” Xerox said with another shrug. “Most summons have to be dismissed, but I was never summoned, so maybe I’ll just… poof back home when my world drifts far enough away. For now though, here.”

Sunset blinked as Xerox reached into another pouch at his belt, producing a small, intricately designed crystal container in the shape of a heart, detailed with silver inlets and filled with a viscous, black liquid.

“What’s this?” Sunset asked in confusion, taking the item and yelping as she felt energy surge from within and shoot up her arm, invigorating her somewhat.

“My token,” Xerox explained, chuckling. “It’s called a Dark Heart Container, it holds Life Energy that works best with people touched by Darkness. I’m guessing you’ve used Dark Magic before?” He watched curiously as Sunset froze before giving a slow, seemingly shameful nod. “Hey, no worries, if you made mistakes before just don’t make them again, yeah? I’m literally made from Dark Magic, and I turned out just fine, right?”

Sunset thought on that for a moment before nodding again, although still hesitantly. While she didn’t know much about Xerox, he seemed nice enough, and he was trying to help her as best he could with her situation. The fact that he was supposedly a Dark Magic construct didn’t seem to affect him the way that her mind told her it should, or if it had, he’d moved past it. “Thank you,” she offered finally, slowly closing her fingers around the Dark Heart Container and taking a deep, steadying breath as she felt the energy surge through her again.

“That’s my Token too,” Xerox pointed out. “If you ever need help in the future, you can use it to summon me here. Don’t be afraid to use it.”

Sunset nodded one final time as she slipped the Token into her pocket. “I won’t,” she promised, shuddering as the energy seemed to leave her when her touch left the Heart Container. “I’ll have to keep this safe…”

Xerox nodded in agreement before his attention shifted, seemingly staring into a dark potion of the cave before standing abruptly, Sunset and Hiccup following suit. “Time for me to go,” he said, taking both Sunset and Hiccup’s hands and shaking them firmly. “Take care of yourselves, and remember, I’m just a call away if you need help.”

With that, Xerox turned away from the duo, walking directly towards the cavern wall where the shadows seemed densest… and vanishing within them without a trace.

Sunset stared at the wall in awe. When she turned to Hiccup, she saw the same reflected back at her in his eyes. After a moment of the two just staring at each other, Sunset coughed awkwardly, turning towards the cavern entrance and making her way out. “We should get back,” she said simply. “It’s late.”

“Y-yeah…” Hiccup stammered, blinking his shock away before shaking his head. As if his life wasn’t crazy enough before…

Ducking behind a large boulder covered in seaweed and barnacles, Snotlout couldn’t help but grin to himself, shoving a fist in his mouth to keep from cackling. His luck couldn’t have gotten any better!

On yet another late-night workout session in the woods, the burly young Viking had overheard the strange sound of something breaking - he’d broken enough things to know the sound even if he didn’t recognise the material - and moved to investigate. If he could take down an intruder, he’d be a hero in the village before even killing his first Dragon!

He’d held back slightly, however, when he’d seen the unknown figure stood talking away with his twig of a cousin and that weird new girl, as if it was the most normal thing in the world! Snotlout hated to admit it, but when his cousin had been holding that knife, he’d almost been proud to call Hiccup family, ready to charge in and provide backup if the village heir had struck… only to stare in horror as Hiccup instead lead the stranger and the girl down to the beach!

He’d been listening the whole time since they’d stepped into the cavern. And what a conversation to eavesdrop on! It turned out that the weird invader was some kind of magic creature from another world, who walked around with Fairies on his belt of all things, and he’d given the girl - who sounded like a Witch of all things if he’d heard things right - a Dark Magic trinket to not only make herself stronger, but call on the creature whenever she wanted!?

As he watched the two walk away and make their way back up to the village for the night, Snotlout grinned to himself. His father would want to hear this - if the girl was a Witch, the whole village would come together to take her down. She wouldn’t stand a chance!