Music Box Blues

by PrincessColumbia

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony Comic, Sad, Vice-Principal Luna, Drama, Equestria Girls, Principal Celestia, Princess Celestia, Human, Sunset Shimmer, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe
Length: 45764

Principal Celestia gets help from a completely unexpected source when trying to find a gift for Sunset Shimmer

Principal Celestia has had her hands full since taking a magically mute Sunset Shimmer. It hasn't been that long since the Fall Formal, and she's still trying to figure out basic communication with her student, let alone how to get her anything remotely like a Hearth's Warming present.
A hastily dashed off letter to her pony counterpart suddenly launches her on a night of adventure that will force her to question everything she thought she knew about Sunset Shimmer and how she can help the pony-turned-girl.

You're kinda going to have to read at least the first few chapters of My Empire of Dirt for this to make much sense. This story is considered canon to Empire.

I was originally going to write this as a one-shot, but once I hit 10,000 words, I figured I'd better break it up into chapters.

Cover art by Princeling

Published 2020-01-02 20:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-05-18 04:40:50 UTC

Ornaments reflected light, of a candle in the night

Author's Note

When the holidays come ‘round, it’s inevitable that the thoughts of preparations for your preferred holiday celebration will crowd out others. When one’s predominance of memories are negative when associated with said holiday, it’s easy to slip into melancholia. When one is already working on a mini-novel to purge a different set of negative associations and problematic history, one’s thoughts trend toward integrating the holiday into the story.
This work is canon to “My Empire of Dirt,” but just didn’t fit well into the story that I’m telling with that work. Continuity-wise, the most spoiler-free statement I can make on this is that it falls sometime between Chapter 5 and 7. Teensy-weensy spoiler ahead, but it’s not really one if you’ve got half a brain and any knowledge of EQG tropes. I wanted to do something with the ideas I had for this, so enjoy this unexpected “holiday special.”

Ornaments reflected light, of a candle in the night

Principal Celestia stared at the door to Sunset’s room, thoroughly perplexed. The holiday preparations had been going so well, with the decorations on the house going up in record time with the assistance of a teenager in the home, plus the occasional help of Princess Twilight when she was able to spare time from her studies of the magic that had cursed Sunset. Luna had begun her usual annual grumble sessions about the “crass, commercial nature” of Hearth’s Warming these days, all while “sneaking” Hearth’s Warming sweaters on after work and topping off her hot chocolate with a hint of peppermint schnapps as a nightcap. The student body was getting into the swing of the season even more than the last few years, what with the ongoing rebuilding of friendships in the wake of the Fall Formal. While Sunset’s current condition made it a challenge to consider any aspect of it positive, the students and staff at Canterlot High were definitely blossoming without Sunset’s former scheming keeping them divided and suppressed.

Celestia had been setting up the tree when Sunset had come home from spending time with her friends. The principal was just about to ask the girl if she could assist, when the darkest stormcloud seemed to pass over Sunset’s face, and the girl ran into her room and slammed the door.

Naturally, as soon as Celestia could untangle herself from the string of lights she’d been handling, she chased after the girl and now stood outside the door. Should she just open the door? No, that would destroy some of the trust that she’d worked so hard to build the last several weeks. Even if she did, what would she do, play twenty questions with the girl while she took random stabs in the dark trying to guess at whatever memory land-mine she’d accidentally tripped over with the Hearth’s Warming tree?

In that brief moment, an image flashed across her imagination, one where she opened the door and ran over to Sunset and held her close while the girl processed her emotions. Celestia shook her head, I’m not her mother, I’m not even related. I remind her of someone she had a rough relationship with that ended badly. I’m probably the last person in the world...in the multiverse that she wants to have giving her any sort of affection. She put a hand on the door, her heart aching and not quite sure why. Celestia, don’t get too close. When all is said and done she may simply go back to Equestria once the princesses figure out what the curse is all about. She’s not even a foster child, she’s not even a legal resident of this world. You’re just here to take care of her because there is nobody else to do so. Sighing, she stood straight and pulled her hand away from the wood panel and curled it into a loose fist.

She knocked briefly, “Sunset, honey, are you okay?” After several moments of no response, she said, “Sunset, I need to know if you’re alright…” the sound of a pillow thumping against the door at reasonably high velocity interrupted her, “...well, okay then. I’ll leave you be for now, but I want to see you for dinner later.” She paused, then realized she was waiting for a verbal response. Sighing (a disturbing habit she’d picked up since this fiasco started), she headed back to the living room to finish trimming the tree.

Sunset seemed to be handling her odd mood better by the time she joined Celestia and her sister for dinner, but any time she glimpsed the decorated tree in the living room, she sighed and filled her mouth with food. While the squash soup was good, it wasn’t that good, and at the rate Sunset was shoving it into her mouth she’d wind up consuming four bowls before Celestia finished one. Even Luna was noticing, instead of keeping up her usual light mealtime banter she was watching the girl with a pensive expression. A few minutes later when Sunset made to ladle herself another bowl of soup, Celestia put her hand on the girl’s wrist. “Sunset, do you need…” she hesitated, “Does the tree bother you for some reason?”

Sunset looked over to the oversized temporary houseplant, the tree lights glinting off unshed tears in the girls eyes. She looked down at her empty bowl and then tapped on her phone. The synthetic “No” was incongruous with her behavior, but then it was possible the tree only reminded her of whatever was bothering her. Celestia squeezed gently, drawing Sunset’s eyes to meet hers, “Would you like to go to bed early tonight?”

Sunset swallowed back a sob and tapped the “Yes” button on her phone. Celestia smiled sympathetically and let Sunset take her phone and bowl. The two educators watched silently as the girl rinsed her bowl out and left the room.

Luna spoke up once Sunset’s door clicked closed, “You need to do something to show her that she’s a member of this family if you want her to open up to you the way you’re hoping for.”

Startled, Celestia glowered at her sister, “I’m not going to push her into a relationship she may not want. We can’t even be sure what she wants for dinner, let alone what she wants to do for her living situation once this mess is resolved.”

Luna snorted, “I highly doubt you’re talking about letting her move back to that warehouse we found her in.”

Celestia rolled her eyes, “Of course not, Lu. I’m talking about her moving back to Equestria. If I understand the situation right, she’s actually old enough chronologically that she should be fully graduated from school on the other side of the portal. Goodness, she was working on the equivalent of a doctoral thesis when she fled here. Once things are...worked out between Sunset and the princesses, what’s to keep her here? She has a whole life on the other side that she abandoned in pursuit of whatever plan led to her putting on that crown at the Fall Formal. She has every reason to go back to that, and none to stay here with m…” Celestia cleared her throat, “No reason to stay with the life she had on this side of the portal.”

Luna raised her eyebrow at her sister’s unintentional slip of the tongue. Celestia pretended to not notice and took another mouthful of soup, intending to let the silence end the conversation. Luna was apparently having none of that, however. “I dare say that she already has something here that she never had over there; you.”

Celestia put her hands down hard enough that her spoon clattered on the rim of the bowl and splashed in her soup, now glaring at Luna, “Oh, she does have me over there. A perfect, immortal goddess queen version of me, one that knows more about magic than probably the entirety of all human fiction works have ever contemplated combined!”

It was Luna’s turn to let the silence dominate the conversation as she lifted her bowl and noisily (intentionally so) slurped down the last of her soup. Only after setting the bowl down on the counter and deliberately putting her spoon into it did she speak again. “If she is so perfect, why did Sunset run away?” As Celestia sat in slightly stunned silence, Luna got up and rinsed off her dishes before returning to Celestia to give her a somewhat awkward sideways hug, “Even if she does go back to Equestria when this is all over, don’t you think it’d be better for her if she knew there was someone here that loved her?”

Celestia sighed dramatically, a long-running sisterly signal that she yielded to Luna’s argument...but of course as the older sibling she was honor bound to not verbally acknowledge it. “I don’t ‘love’ her, I care about her wellbeing as one of my students.”

Luna stood straight with a smirk, “Yes, because all high school principals would take into their home a homeless illegal alien into their home after said illegal turned into a huge she-demon and brainwashed the school instead of, you know, handing them over to child protective services or some similar agency. It’s totally something I can see, say, Cinch doing, since so many principals do that as part of caring for the wellbeing of their students.” So saying, she squeezed Celestia’s shoulder affectionately and left the room.

Thirty minutes later, Celestia sat in an otherwise empty living room, magic journal in her lap, ballpoint pen in hand. Luna had gone to her own room and from the sounds of her barking orders into her headset and the furious clicking and clatter that accompanied one of her first-person shooter games that came through the door, would likely be there until late into the night. The place on the page for her communication, should she be able to formulate it, was empty. How did one ask about the history of another person through a third party about an odd reaction to a tree? Did they even celebrate Hearth’s Warming in Equestria?

Then there was Sunset herself. With the holidays approaching a swift clip and the girl unable to communicate, she had no idea what to do about clothing, let alone presents. The last time they had gone to a clothing store that was popular among students, Sunset had experienced a seizure almost as soon as she set foot in the store. Apparently, self-expression via wardrobe choices was considered a potential form of communication by the curse and decided to stop any possibility before it could start. Celestia and Luna had taken to measuring Sunset themselves then taking turns going to different stores to get clothing that was kinda-sorta like what they remembered Sunset wearing in the past. Luna thought the girl could use some video games, but they only had the vaguest idea what kind of games she liked. Celestia considered some music, but the two sisters had been completely divided on what they thought Sunset listed to. Of course, their individual tastes made the conversation even more of a challenge, what with Celestia being an avid lover of ABBA and Luna once being an underground death metal celebrity, the door was closed on that subject almost as soon as it was opened. The idea of a new computer came and went, they had already had to get a new one when Sunset moved in just so she’d be able to do her schoolwork, and the same with the phone. Even thinking of those voice assistants seemed incredibly insensitive. Sunset’s inability to communicate beyond “yes” and “no” made it impossible to gauge with any accuracy how their gift ideas might work out.

Deciding to take the tactful route, Celestia combined her two concerns:

Dear Princess Celestia,

We’re approaching one of our annual holidays and are in a bit of a quandry. We don’t really know what to get Sunset for Hearth’s Warming. Do you have Hearth’s Warming in your world? I can’t imagine why you would, given the holiday is about the miracle of a yule log kept lit through a month long siege from when an ancient kingdom was founded over 1,500 years ago. Since you mentioned that your version of Discord had thrown all nations into chaos during that time frame, I can’t imagine you have anything similar. Or perhaps I’m confusing the dates?

In any case, we exchange gifts with each other, but due to Sunset’s inability to tell us what she might want, Luna and I are stymied. We did notice when we set up the tree (a tradition that got picked up for Hearth’s Warming celebrations about 1,300 years ago), I noticed that the sight of the tree made Sunset rather depressed. I was hoping that you might know what caused this depression, or if she was showing any signs of it before she came to this world.

Whatever details you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Principal Celestia

With the letter written and finally satisfied that she had done all she could on the matter for now, Celestia closed the journal and went to bed.

If you'd just believe, Just believe with me

Celestia whipped around to see a pink-skinned woman, this one also with pointed ears that had white tips. She was kneeling down and looking at the presents that were stacked under the tree, holding a small package in the shape of a game or movie box and inspecting it as if the wrapping weren’t even there.

“...but...I...uh...what’s the difference?” the woman’s statement had completely derailed Celestia’s train of thought.

The woman chuckled, “Well, we’re here for Sunset, but there’s no reason that we can’t make another gift a great one.” So saying, she waved her hand over the gift, which glowed briefly. Without another word, she placed it back on the pile and stood.

“...what did she mean by that?” blurted Celestia, finally getting some of her conversational mooring lines tied.

The pink woman grinned wryly and replied, “What did who mean by what?”

Celestia found herself once again foundering, “Aurora...she said...motherhood…”

The woman simply strode past the principal, “My dear Celestia, we can’t help you with that, no matter how precious a gift that would be. You’ll have to explore your options on that front on your own.”

Celestia followed the woman with her eyes, her gaze latching on to the door that she had seen already once that night, it’s wooden paneling and stonework presented in jarring contrast to the modern construction of the house’s interior. Now that she had a bit more familiarity with it, she had a moment to realize there was a small fragment of fluorescent lighting poking down through the ceiling seamlessly, a bright yellow point of light that appeared for all the world like the ceiling had been built around the light, rather than the light appearing and displacing the sheetrock and paint.

“Come, my dear. While time is a fluid thing for us, we should not waste it.” So saying, the elfin woman held out her hand for Celestia.

Still reeling in something akin to surprised befuddlement, she clasped the woman’s hand without thinking. Her mental flailing about was made even worse when the disconcerting feeling she was bracing herself for did not repeat from her experience with Aurora, instead of the suspended buzzing her body felt as though she had been force-fed into a single wall outlet backward and inside out before being practically yanked off her feet.

“...but I don’t even know you’re naaaaa~...” Celestia’s frantic verbal stalling tactic failed miserably as she was once again dragged through what she now suspected was a magical wooden door.

“...all I’m saying is that you probably are overthinking your menu a bit. Yes, it’s good to have variety, and you’ll eventually get to the point where you don’t even need to ask your guests what they want and just give it to them, but you’re running a bar, not a diner. I’m sure your power generator can be made compatible with Federation replicators, all you’d need to do is make sure whatever is feeding it recipes has enough raw materials and then you can focus on the drinks, which is the real art of being a bartender.” said the centuries-old woman.

Sunset cocked her head to the side, “But I thought the art of the bartender was having a good ear to listen?”

Guinan gave that enigmatic smile that only a handful of beings in existence had mastered (Sunset thought that Princess Celestia must have taken lessons from this woman), “It’s like stage magic or aikido; you’re using the patron’s focus on the drink to keep their mental defenses lowered. The better your skill in preparing and presenting the drink the more likely that they’ll…” the el-aurian trailed off and turned to the entrance of the bar, eyes not quite focusing on the fixtures that gave the entryway the signature “mid-20th century” feel.

Sunset watched the other bartender nonplussed. Suddenly, the bell jangled, once again without the accompaniment of the door being opened. This time Sunset didn’t have her hands full of rare alcohol, so she immediately darted around the bar and ran to the hallway leading to the front entrance to find...nothing.

She walked carefully down the hall and opened the door. The inside of a home greeted her, a winter solstice tree of some variety stood in the living room (she’d long ago realized that “Hearth’s Warming” was one of the dozens of nearly identical celebrations across the multiverse, “Christmas” being one and “Yule” being a close third), a hallway to some bedrooms to her left and a kitchen to her right. She was about to call out to see if there was anyone there who might need her services, but then caught sight of the grandfather clock on the opposite wall and realized it was after midnight wherever this was. Gingerly, she stepped back into her bar and closed the door, once again thoroughly perplexed at the odd behavior of the building.

As Celestia was able to get her bearings about her, she realized that she was standing in front of Canterlot High. Something was bothering her, though, and she couldn’t quite figure out what. She looked around to see if she could figure out what was itching the back of her brain, but nothing really stood out to her as “this is wrong!” The school was the same, bearing signs of recent repair work to the front entrance and making it clear that this wasn’t yet another Hearth’s Warming of the past. There was snow in layers around the school, the time seemed to have been rewound to mid-afternoon, though what day she wasn’t sure, the sun sinking in the sky and, judging from the coats the students were putting on, temperatures dropping as evening prepared to take hold. Even the students gathering in disgruntled clumps as they prepared to leave for home wasn’t what was setting off Celestia’s alarm bells, but that was nonetheless a significant difference of note.

“That slightly itchy feeling in the back of your mind is normal, it’s what tells you that you’re not in your home universe.”

Celestia whipped her head around to see the pink woman gazing sadly across the schoolyard, looking at the window to Celestia’s own office...no, wait…

“That’s...me!” gasped the educator. She saw this alternate version of herself standing stoically inside her office. The doppelganger had a pensive expression, eyes flitting about the cliques in the courtyard as she breathed in a slow and steady cadence that Celestia recognized as her own private meditation technique, one she only used when she had no idea how a situation came about and not a clue as to what to do about it.

“That Celestia never took in Sunset after the Fall Formal. She didn’t need to.”

The visiting Celestia blinked in surprise at this, “What do you mean…?”

She was interrupted by a familiar voice that she hadn’t properly heard in nearly three months cried out, “Girls, please, wait!”

Celestia turned to see Sunset Shimmer, whole, uninjured, and clearly not having had a prolonged period of depression induced self-starvation, running out of the school entrance toward a familiar group of five other girls.

All was not well, however. Sunset had tears streaming down her face, and her backpack wasn’t closed, so random papers were flying out behind it in her wake. As for the girls, they were sharing looks of anger, resentment, and...disappointment? Odd…

Rainbow Dash was the first to speak, “I don’t wanna hear it, Shimmer. It could only be you! Stop trying to tell us it’s anyone else!” Celestia was shocked, given how intensely loyal Dash had grown to Sunset.

The fire-haired girl sobbed again, “But I swear, it’s not me doing it! I don’t know how they got into my phone, and I know Anon-a-miss’ profile page has my cutie-mark…”

Rarity stepped towards Sunset, seemingly to block her from Applejack’s view while delivering an angry tirade, “Sunset Shimmer, you betrayed our trust! We took you into our little group because Princess Twilight offered you a chance. A chance that you wasted for...what? Being able to feel superior again? The need for some form of power even if it isn’t magic? Well congratulations, Sunset! You did it! You got into our hearts just enough for it to really, really hurt when you turned back to your true colors! That’s a...form of power, I suppose.” Rarity glared at the other girl, “Does it feel as good as you expected?”

Pinkie Pie’s hair was nearly ruler-straight by this point, the principal noting that it had been sagging from its signature cotton-candy bouncy curls since they had stomped out of the building. “I thought...I thought if I threw you enough parties you’d know what it means to be a friend…” Celestia sighed and shook her head. Whatever was going on had clearly hit this group hard.

She glanced around, looking for some sign of an adult presence that might help to diffuse the situation. She was sure that there was a reasonable explanation for what was happening, but she saw nobody. Almost desperately, she glanced at her office window, only to see the Principal Celestia of this world deeply engaged in some sort of crisis involving the totally-not-lesbian-couple of Lyra and Bon Bon. Since she was outside the window, she couldn’t hear the conversation, but it was obviously a rough time for the two girls. Lyra had her face buried in her hands and what was visible of her cheeks were covered in tears. Bon Bon had an arm around her girlfriend and was handing something to Celestia with an angrily determined look on her face. The principal looked at the object, which turned out to be Bon Bon’s phone. After a moment of reviewing the screen’s contents, she hurriedly sat down at her desk and unlocked her computer. (Celestia noted this version of herself was using an iFruity, not an AppleBook as she did) Within moments she had brought up a webpage and had grabbed a phone.

That was when Celestia realized that every single group of students in the courtyard all had their own phones out and were looking at something. She approached one group and used her height to look over their shoulders. On Micro Chips’ phone, she saw a social media profile with a rather...embarrassing picture of the boy with a finger inside a computer power supply and a rictus grimace on his face as he was apparently being shocked by the still live wire. In the background was Brindle, connecting the power cord to a wall socket. Across from Chips, Brindle had his own phone open to the same social media account but to a different post, this one a picture of Brindle caught on camera at what Celestia guessed was some sort of gamer party, wearing a t-shirt with some sort of computer command printed on it, armpits stained with sweat, cheese-puff stains on his fingers, and said snack stacked on his belly as he reclined in front of a monitor, one hand on a keyboard and the other on a mouse. The two were having a hissed argument about who took what picture or set up the other prank.

Celestia moved from huddle to huddle, seeing the same profile on every phone, dozens of different pictures, spilled secrets, and rumors being posted about nearly every student in the school. Through the windows to her office, she could see Celestia bringing in various members of the staff and the phone off the cradle while the other version of her was clearly on some form of a conference call. Were she to guess, it was probably someone in the legal department at the district level, trying to get a cyberbullying page taken down as quickly as possible. At least, she thought, That’s what I would do.

She turned back to her purpose for being in this world, only to see things had gotten worse. Sunset was on her knees, watching dejectedly as her friends walked away, remaining in a huddle as they went. Celestia walked up to the girl, tried to put her hand on Sunset’s shoulder comfortingly, and flinched as her hand passed through Sunset’s shoulder. “Oh, Sunset…” sighed the principal.

The girl, not knowing she had anyone at her side, got her sobbing under control, almost blindly grabbed at a book that had fallen out of her still open back, stuffed it away and closed her pack with a jerk. She staggered to her feet and began fleeing in the direction of the industrial district. That means...she’s still in the warehouse!? The principal whipped around and stalked up to her window...and through it. Might as well use my current state to my advantage, she thought as she shook her head to clear the disorientation that phasing through solid matter did to her.

Luna was speaking, “...and it seems this ‘Anon-a-miss’ account has only sprung up in the last couple of weeks. At first it was only targeting Sunset Shimmer’s friends, but in the last few days has begun taking submissions for rumors, humiliations, and pranks against pretty much any student in the school.” Celestia noted that this version of Luna was working on an AppleBook Pro, a computer her Luna wouldn’t be caught dead with (as her sister had loudly proclaimed many times). She had it set up on the edge of her sister’s desk as they worked in tandem. “The posts have grown increasingly offensive as the days have progressed.”

Counselor Neighsay’s voice came from the desk phone, “And we have no idea who is behind this?”

Celestia, the one at her desk, snorted quietly enough the phone wouldn’t pick it up. “It’s clear the entire thing is meant to implicate Sunset Shimmer. The content of the blog is the kind of information that she has confided in me that she’s used in the past to manipulate the students, but this isn’t her style at all, even before the...events of the Fall Formal.”

The spectral Celestia perked up. If this Celestia had come up with a way to get the school board off her back about magic… “You still haven’t explained that event to my satisfaction, Celestia. Just because I haven’t managed to convince the entire school board of the necessity of an inquiry doesn’t mean I have forgotten it.” Both Celestia’s winced, So much for that idea… thought the visiting principal, “And the obfuscation you created at the Musical Showcase is not going to distract everyone for long.”

At this the native Celestia and Vice Principal Luna both cringed. The spectral Celestia thought back in confusion, The Musical Showcase…? But we canceled that after...oh, right. After Sunset was found trying to kill herself and I had to take her in. Does one person’s life really change that much?

“Regardless of any other events,” came a voice from the phone that Celestia recognized as belonging to Red Tape, one of the district’s lawyers, “We do have a pretty clear case for cyber-bullying, regardless of who the actual target is. I’ll get on the phone with a judge to get this blog taken down, I’ll leave the investigation into who started it in your hands. I will, of course, see if I can get a rider on the court order to have the ISP turn over their records on the account’s creation, just in case that helps with the search.”

Native-Celestia and Luna relaxed visibly, but they didn’t let the relief that someone was willing to direct the conversation away from the topic of magic show when they resumed their portions of the conversation.

Before the visiting Celestia could eaves-drop further, her guide walked through the wall. “So, Celestia, have you realized the gift you must give to Sunset yet?”

Celestia jumped, ignoring the resuming conversation, “What!? No, I...will you stop doing that?”

The woman smirked, “Doing what?”

Celestia found her thoughts being interrupted by the conversation about the Anon-a-miss cyberbullying, so she walked back through the wall to the courtyard, where the subdued conversations were completely blocked out. As her traveling companion followed in her wake, she spun around and put her hands on her hips. “You keep interrupting my train of thought with your...non-sequiturs! And how am I supposed to know what to get Sunset? All I’ve seen all night is what not to get her, and I don’t even know what I’m supposed to learn about Sunset here that’s going to give me any clues!” Her statement trailed off with a shout, a very loud counterpart to the depressed, angry atmosphere in the courtyard.

The otherworldly woman smiled in the way that Celestia knew was practically a mirror image of her own “teacher’s smile” that she’d been using for a decade, “And where is the Sunset Shimmer of this world now?”

Celestia didn’t answer right away but turned to look in the direction the girl had fled. She took a deep breath and started after the girl, knowing where she would go.

Before she could take more than two steps, she felt the other woman’s hand on her shoulder, then was suddenly somewhere else. The move was so sudden that there was absolutely no sensation of movement at all. Her mind reacted as though she was physically struck, and for a moment wasn’t sure if she was going to pass out from the sudden reverse-vertigo she was experiencing.

She whimpered as her lizard brain stopped screaming at her adrenal glands, “Stop that!”

The hand was removed from her shoulder and she glanced around, realizing that she recognized the room. It was Sunset’s room in the warehouse and said girl was absent. Not for long, however, as the sound of an industrial loading bay door being slid open and closed met their ears, followed by the hurried clamor of footsteps up the stairs outside the door. The office doorway was flung open and slammed against the wall, causing some framed pictures in a much more homey office than the last visit she had paid here. It was no wonder she had to take a moment to recognize it, the room was an actual bedroom by this point, with the walls decorated with posters and pictures, a chest-of-drawers on one wall with a TV mounted on it, and a loft bed over a desk that was cluttered with the detritus of a life in the process of being lived. Sunset yanked her bag open, pulled the journal out, and tossed the bag up on the bed. She slumped down on the chair and dropped the book on an open space that was obviously accustomed to the presence of the tome, as there was nothing in the space that was nearly perfectly sized for it save the desk calendar everything else sat upon. She looked for just a moment as though she were about to open it. Her frame shuddering, she slumped down and quietly cried into her folded arms. Celestia found herself lifting her hand to put it on the girl’s shoulder, but put it back to her side as she knew she wouldn’t even be able to touch Sunset.

After a brief time where the only thing happening was Sunset’s tears, she sat up, wiped her eyes, and opened the journal. Celestia was getting used to ignoring the voice of protest that told her that eavesdropping or reading over shoulders was rude, it was quite literally the only way she could get adequate information in her current state. She stepped up behind her counterpart’s student and read as the girl wrote:

Dear Princess Twilight,

Something has gone horribly wrong, and I don’t know how to handle it. My friends have all turned their backs on me and it’s all because someone is using my old reputation against me…

Celestia hummed in mild confusion and let her eyes move up the page a bit to read what was visible of the previous entry in the journal:

and of course Rainbow had the time of her life, Pinkie got a new…(would ‘mascot’ be the right word for a rubber chicken?), and I think there’s still some of that cake the pegasi squirreled away somewhere, ‘cause I keep seeing Derpy and Rainbow with pieces of it as they fly around town. It’s been, what, a couple months since then? How are they keeping it from getting hard as a rock?

Speaking of rocks, we need to compare Pinkies, or at least her family. Does your Pinkie have a sister named Maud, and does she have an...unusual affection for rocks?

Yours in friendship,

Twilight Sparkle

Celestia stood from her reading and turned to the other woman, “She’s communicating with Twilight? That’s good, she needs a friend right now.”

Celestia’s guide nodded her head sagely, “Her perfect gift will come to her on the pages of her journal, but she won’t know it’s a gift for some time yet.” The woman gave a subtle wink, “I call that kind of gift, ‘stealth presents.’”

The principal turned back to the journal, “So how much longer are we waiting for this gift?”

“Oh, we’re not waiting,” came the reply.

Celestia barely had enough time to look up in surprise, “Wait, what? I thought we were learning about the gift for Sunset?”

A smile dimpled the other woman’s face. “Yes, but you won’t learn that by seeing what this Sunset gets for her gift. As similar, as they are, they are not the same person. It’s time to move on to our next stop,” she grabbed Celestia’s wrist, and instead of the sudden non-motion move that the previous trip had, this jump felt like she were dropping in all directions at once and then suddenly stopped.

Celestia yanked her wrist out of the woman’s hand, “Stop that! Stop yanking me around the universe like that!”

She giggled, “That would be the ‘multiverse,’ my dear. And the events we’re here for are about to unfold…” The woman swept her hand to indicate the hall around them, which Celestia realized was back at Canterlot High. The only clue she had that this was a different universe was a repeat of the earlier scene, but this time in the school hallway.

Applejack was looming aggressively over Sunset, taking full advantage of her few more inches and her cowboy boots giving an additional boost, “How did she know about my nickname? How did she get the pictures from your phone?” The cowgirl poked an index finger accusingly between Sunset’s breasts, “It was you all along! You’re “Anon-A-Miss!”

Unlike in the previous universe, Rarity remained quiet and subdued and Pinkie kept her hair in a frizzy poof, crossing her arms in anger. Rainbow Dash was, of course, ready to speak for the group when it came to broken trust, “We trusted you, Sunset! We thought you were our friend!”

It was only then that Rarity spoke, “How could you do this? After all we’ve been through together?”

Celestia felt a lump in her throat as she watched, wishing she could intervene but forced by her role as observer to remain unnoticed and unknown.

Sunset spread her hands, “No, wait, you guys...I didn’t do this! I could never hurt any of you!”

Unable to watch any more of the interaction without being able to do something about it, she turned to face her guide, “Please…” she pleaded as Pinkie Pie joined in the angry accusations, “Can’t I do anything about this?”

The other woman smiled sadly, “No, there’s nothing that she could do at this time. She doesn’t have that kind of relationship with Sunset.”

“What? No, I mean…” it took a moment for Celestia to recognize what was being said without being told directly; she couldn’t intervene at all. That wasn’t her purpose here, it was just to observe. The Celestia of this universe was just as impotent since this Sunset only saw the woman as an educator, not any sort of parental figure...Celestia, you stop that train of thought right now!

She broke away from her self-chastizement when she heard Applejack say, “I’m sorry, but you did this to us. Tell whatever secrets you want...but we don’t have to listen.” She turned to see Applejack and Rainbow Dash leading the other three away as Sunset sank to her knees, tears streaming down her face beneath hands that had covered her face in anguish.

Celestia felt a hand gently grasp her elbow, and she turned to see the woman who’d been guiding her around. For the first time that night, the elfin being looked genuinely contrite that she was about to move Celestia through time and space again. “If it’s any consolation, this Sunset is also using the journal to communicate with the Twilight Sparkle of her home universe.”

To Celestia’s relief, instead of the near-instantaneous jarring not-yank, this time the world around them slowly faded, then a new world resolved around them. They were in the nearby hangout spot that the Cakes ran. Celestia had occasionally visited when she had time...which was usually during the summer months, as her school schedule usually meant she just didn’t have the time.

A familiar scene was taking place, this time at a booth where Rainbow Dash was angrily venting at the contrite Sunset Shimmer. “...of course we think it’s you because this kind of thing is what you used to do all the time!”

Sunset was set back a step at the heat in Rainbow’s voice, “But that was before, I’ve changed, you know I have! I wouldn’t give up your friendship for anything!”

Rarity chose that moment to speak up, turning to put herself between Sunset and Fluttershy as though to protect the yellow-skinned girl. “The problem is we’ve heard similar from you ‘before,’ I seem to recall that you were acting rather contrite and friendly...right before you stabbed me in the back to get the crown for the Spring Fling!”

Celestia remembered that; it was a particularly vicious rumor campaign that involved a secret that Rarity was trying to keep...and apparently had confessed it to Sunset, who had used it to spread rumors...ouch! thought Celestia, Karmic backlash to the extreme, if this is the same incident as the other universes.

And so the night went. Universe after universe, setting after setting, Sunset Shimmer was rejected by her friends because the evidence was just too strong that she had betrayed them. Enough universes flew by that Celestia had lost count, and she was honestly starting to feel a bit numb.

She was able to piece together far more than any of the people in any single universe was able to. It was as obvious in hindsight as it was rediculous...the Canterlot Movie Club (whose membership included the younger sisters to Applejack and Rarity and Rainbow Dash’s little hanger-on) had engaged in a campaign to alienate Sunset Shimmer from the rest of the group, apparently out of sheer jealousy. While the school would naturally start the process of investigating and shutting down the Anon-A-Miss blog once it was brought to the administration’s attention, it was never going to be in time to prevent a horrible fracture in the group that had befriended the two extra-universal visitors.

One thing she couldn’t shake the feeling of was going further and further afield, as though her “home” universe were getting further and further away. This was cemented in her mind (as three-dimensional as the concept was, what with her traveling through universes and not space) when the residents of a visited universe went from being human to various creatures she associated with fantasy, such as elfin beings like her guide, to centaurs to even small ponies like that of Sunset’s home universe. In each the story played out exactly the same; Anon-a-Miss would start up, spill secrets that were meant only for the six friends, then Sunset would be emotionally broken and alone just before the holiday. The holiday itself would change names depending on the universe. Whether it was Hearth’s Warming or Solstice or Yule or other even stranger or exotic names like Savior’s Day, Christmas, or one of a string of holidays with equally exotic-sounding names like Hanukkah or Kwanza.

After watching a mermaid Sunset shimmer swim away from a Canterlot High built out of a coral reef (she stopped asking how she was even able to breathe in these environments about the time she witnessed a version of Sunset Shimmer that was a space-eel that lived in an asteroid belt around a blue-dwarf star get rejected by a trio of space-squid, a space-octopus, and a big pink space-jellyfish) an emotionally exhausted Celestia slumped down on the seafloor. “Please...can I go home? I can’t watch this anymore.”

She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up at her guide. “We have one more universe to visit, and this one will be the most important one that I have to show you.” said the otherworldly woman.

The corral seemed to wash away, then the water turned to wind and blew away the sand to reveal the carpet of what Celestia at first thought was a library, but closer inspection showed it to be a large study, just one with lots and lots of books. Sitting at the very large desk in the room was a woman that looked startlingly familiar, but also just different enough from whatever her subconscious was trying to connect the face with to throw off direct recognition. She was leaning back and slumped down into a very large desk chair, looking more like it belonged in front of a roaring fire with its wide arms, high back, and leather upholstery. Her face was a mask of defeated misery and in one hand was a nearly untouched glass of what looked to be brandy. The woman herself was wearing a rather smart looking pantsuit, though in more muted colors than Celestia preferred, the woman opted for a gray suit instead of Celestia’s preferred khaki and purple. Her makeup had been washed off if the leftover mascara (always hard to really get off without the hot water of a shower) was any indication, and her light blonde hair was falling out of the hairstyle that had obviously not been touched up in a couple of hours. The woman’s computer, a make and model Celestia didn’t recognize at all, had a darkened screen, but the status lights on the keyboard showed that it was at least powered on. A silent phone sat in front of the woman, a girl that looked very much like Sunset Shimmer graced the screen. Instead of orange skin and bright red and yellow hair, the girl had strawberry blonde locks and a similar shade of skin to the woman at the desk. The girl on the screen was showing the same look that Celestia would see lately on Sunset’s face when she was just able to have fun with her new friends; a smile that would finally reach her eyes, but the depths of those eyes belied experiences that most people her age would never be expected to see, let alone live through.

The tableau remained mostly static, the only indication that what Celestia was seeing wasn’t just a life-sized sculpture was when the phone on the desk started to dim for power saving and the woman would reach out to tap the screen to keep it awake. After this happened three or four times, another woman entered with the bearing of one who had some sad news and didn’t want to deliver it.

This one Celestia recognized right away, for all the newcomer’s skin tone was a near match for the woman in the chair the jet black hair was close enough to what her sister’s hair color was, not to mention the style, that drew her to the inescapable conclusion that she must be looking at a version of her sister...and her own counterpart was the one in the chair.

“Sister,” began this universe’s version of Luna, “...I…” she was clearly hesitating to speak.

“Selene, just say it.” the woman in the chair snapped. “...sorry.”

Selene sighed and gently took the glass of brandy from her sister’s hand. “I just got done on the phone with Lance, you know, Candace’s fiance? He put out the word to the rest of the precinct and took his squad car out to the area we last saw Sunset...he didn’t find anything. Either she knew we were following her and misled us entirely, or she was really good at covering her tracks from after the Chinese food place we lost her at.” Bad news delivered, she slugged down the alcohol and slumped into the seat across the desk from her sister.

Celestia’s counterpart breathed a shuddering sigh, “We...I failed her.”

Selene sighed and reached over the desk to grab the bottle that Celestia had at first assumed was some sort of decorative vase and poured more brandy. That must be expensive stuff...I think I recognize the bottle, Filthy Rich donated it to the school board last PTA conference. I guess in this universe mom and dad did better at settling their assets before… she shook her head to clear the thoughts as Selene spoke, “You were perhaps her best hope for anything resembling a normal life in this world. She said herself that when the portal is closed, that’s it, no magic. She’s alone and everything, and I mean everything she ever held dear, including the subject of study she devoted her life’s work to, is gone. You did everything you could short of dragging her kicking and screaming into our home to provide a better life for her than the one she is stubbornly holding on to out of some misguided form of penance.” The woman behind the desk made to speak, but Selene powered on, “And no, Celeste, don’t even think of spouting off your guilt trip! You always take responsibility for other people’s choices, even…” she paused for just a moment, “Even my suicide attempt when we lost our parents.” The raven-haired woman downed the second glass even faster than the first, but set aside the bottle rather than give herself a refill.

Celeste tapped the screen again to keep the image of Sunset Shimmer from fading. “I just...if this Anonymous group hadn’t started their campaign, we might have at least been able to invite her over for...I don’t know, at least Christmas dinner. But once the cyber-bullying began she just started...pulling away. She is so convinced that she needs to be punished by the people she hurt that she can’t see that they’re just getting petty revenge, not serving justice.”

Selene picked up the brandy bottle and poured another drink, this time handing it to her sister. “Celeste...there’s just nothing you can do right now. I know the bullying campaign has been...unusually toxic, as such things go, and her friends left her, but you’ve been reaching out to be supportive to her the whole time. She’s a strong young woman, she’ll be there at the school doors on the Monday morning after Christmas break ready to take on the student body and probably have some sort of plan to force the portal back open, even with no magic to speak of.”

Celestia absently wrapped a hand around the glass and just held it slightly to the side as she rested her cheek on the opposite fist, slouching against the desk so she could stare at the picture of Sunset. “...I hope so, Selly...I really hope so.”

The two sisters sat in silence for a while. The clock by the window, the one that looked very much like the one in Celestia’s living room, struck 11-o’clock. Celestia decided to use the silence and turned to her guide, “They mentioned there’s no magic here, that Sunset confirmed this, does that mean...?”

The green-skinned woman nodded, a sad smile on her face, “The Sunset of this world will have tested the journal after Harvest Festival...what they call Thanksgiving here. Without Equestria’s magic streaming through the portal, it’s just a very fancy bound book with many empty pages. It was one of Sunset’s lowest points, knowing that she was completely locked away from Equestria, not even to be able to speak to her former mentor, as sweet a torture as that would be.”

Celestia watched the two silent sisters for a moment. Selene’s phone buzzed a couple of times from a text message, to which she replied only briefly, and Celeste finally allowed her phone to go to sleep, closing her eyes. Celestia noticed slight dampness squeezing out onto the woman’s’ eyelashes. She turned back to the other traveler, “Can you take me to this universe’s Sunset Shimmer?”

The woman’s smile was shrouded by sympathy as she indicated Celeste, “I’m afraid this world’s Sunset Shimmer, or the girl who would have been Sunset’s human analog died shortly after childbirth when Celeste was still in college.” Celestia’s hands flew to her mouth, “The father was a man who wanted a one night stand and the poor dear never saw him again. Selene was an invaluable support to Celeste, helping her where a husband and mother were supposed to, rallying Celeste’s friends when Celeste herself was unable to do much due to carrying a child. Sadly, their hopes and dreams were dashed by a congenital defect. Celeste never wanted to experience that kind of pain again, so she had her tubes tied as soon as she was able.” The two spectral visitors turned to observe the native women, “She doesn’t know why she feels such a strong connection to Sunset, she just knows that she wants to love and protect this child from another universe.”

Celestia took a deep breath and opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by Selene standing up from her chair. The younger woman leaned over the desk and gripped her sister’s shoulder gently, “Please try to get some sleep, sister.” She then stood up and left the room.

“Take me to her,” Celestia practically ordered her guide, “Now. I need to see.”

The elfin woman sighed, reached out for Celestia’s hand, and practically as soon as their hands touched Sunset’s room at the factory burst into existence around them, like a bubble popping.

The room was largely the same as the other universes that she had seen Sunset still living in. The blonde-haired girl was curled up in her bunk above her desk. This one had a closed laptop instead of the journal taking pride of place. The journal itself was on the floor across the room from the bed, spine cracked and pages crumpled against the face-down cover of the book. Sobbing echoed through the room, the girl’s body shivering and heaving.

Celestia rushed over and almost accidentally simply phased through the bed to move around the girl to see her face. It was, indeed, Sunset’s face, showing the same level of haunted brokenness that Celestia had first seen the night she picked up her own version of Sunset from the Apple homestead. She’s crying, she’s not yet at the depression stage yet, but she’s close...so close. Instinctively, she made to stroke her hand through Sunset’s hair...only to have her hand pass through the girl’s head. Biting back a hiss of frustration, she stepped back slightly to see what the girl’s eyes were focussed on. It was a picture of her friends, the ones Princess Twilight had tasked with taking care of Sunset. Pinkie was the most different but at the same time the most similar. Her clearly natural curls were bright, bubble-gum pink...but a hint of brown roots could be seen. Rainbow Dash was only recognizable due to her proximity to the others and the normal sporty clothes the girl wore. There was none of her signature rainbow hair, instead just a closely cropped mop of hair that she clearly didn’t do much to care for and a smirk on her tanned face that showed just how little she cared. Rarity was nearly identical to the one from her home universe, the only difference was her hair was walnut brown and her skin was just a few shades of brown lighter. Applejack wasn’t orange, but fairly close with the farmer tan. Fluttershy was recognizable as well, but instead of pink hair it was a cascade of blonde, much lighter than Sunset’s own. Celestia noticed that there was text overlaying the image, and realized that the picture was set as a background to a chat app. She read the visible text, her concern ratcheting up to ‘alarm’ more and more with each line she read.

PonyPrincess: Please, you have to believe me, it wasn’t me!

Soccer>Football: [Soccer>Football has blocked PonyPrincess]

ApplesNAppleAccessories: [ApplesNAppleAccessories has blocked PonyPrincess]

FashionHorse: [FashionHorse has blocked PonyPrincess]

PoppinPartyPlanner: [PoppinPartyPlanner has blocked PonyPrincess]

AnimalsRLuv: [AnimalsRLuv has blocked PonyPrincess]

Celestia noted with alarm that the last time stamp on the chat was three hours prior. “Oh, Sunset…” breathed the principal, sadly gazing into eyes that couldn’t see her.

Into the apparently empty room, Sunset’s own words interrupted her sobbing, “N...nobody...I have nobody...nobody l...lo..loves me…”

Celestia’s heart plummeted in her chest, and suddenly she was in another place entirely. It was a sign of how accustomed she was to suddenly appearing in an alien environment that she at first didn’t realize she was in her own living room again until she turned and barked a shin on her coffee table. Bouncing on one foot while swearing under her breath, she continued her turn and spotted her guide. Forgetting her pain momentarily, she leaped across the room and grabbed the elf woman by the collar, “Take me back!” she spat.

In reply, the woman gave one of her enigmatic smiles and simply put a finger to her lips. “Shhh, it’s nearly midnight, after all.”

Celestia blinked in surprise and looked at the clock. Sure enough, the time was just a couple minutes before midnight...again. She glanced around, “Wait, how come I’m not seeing myself? I was here with Aurora right about this time...unless I lost a day?” she absently let the other woman go in her confusion.

The guide giggled lightly, “Oh, that’s a little secret that those who’ve managed to live as long as I have are privy to. Don’t worry, someone will show you how we did it...in a millennium or two.” She gave a cheeky wink.

Celestia’s thoughts caught up to her again, “That Sunset...she thinks she has nobody. Someone needs to go to her. Will she be okay?”

The green-skinned woman sighed, almost in resignation. “Oh, I’m afraid I can’t answer that. Only my younger sister has knowledge of the presents of the future.” The clock started chiming midnight, “Oh, and my name? It’s Bori.”

Her train of thought once again derailed, Celestia blinked in confusion. “What?” was all the reply she could muster.

Just as the woman’s form began to sparkle and fade, she clarified. “You said you didn’t even know my name when we started our little adventure. It’s Bori.” And with the same mischevious smile she wore when Celestia had first seen her, she vanished completely

Emotionally exhausted, Principal Celestia sank down and slumped back against the couch. Not sure if she could even start to cry any more tears, she scrubbed her face with her hands, rubbing at her sinuses to try to relieve the pressure of her pounding head. I don’t think I was meant for this kind of thing…

With a sigh, she dropped her hands to her sides, then slowly reopened her eyes…

...to see another pair of eyes less than six inches away from hers.

She flinched back into the couch cushions with a yelp, scrambling back and up, practically pulling herself back up onto the couch back to give herself enough space to see yet another elf woman, this one with light brown, ever so slightly green-tinted skin with ear tips the color of coconut and green hair.

“Ooooh!” squealed the newcomer, “This is gonna be so much FUN!”

Author's Note

This chapter was nearly as many words as all the rest of the previously written parts combined. So yes, it took a bit of time. :derpytongue2:

If this part makes you feel like Celestia was just kicked in the shin and had her wallet stolen...good, that was the goal

The candles burning, you know I'm gonna wait, the clock keeps turning, but I know it's not too late

Author's Note

Actual author's notes in an upcoming blog post, but this one is dedicated to my mom, who showed that a good mom knows she's not done when her kid hits 18 but sometimes needs to be the mom even when said kid is going through a divorce and second puberty at the same time at age 40. Thanks, Mom!

Official Author's Notes blog post here!

The candles burning, you know I'm gonna wait, the clock keeps turning, but I know it's not too late

Celestia was, it must be said, far too used to Pinkie Pie to allow the antics of this new mystery visitor to rattle her too much, but it was still an unknown person in her living room! “Excuse me, but I’m going to have to insist that you tell me who you are and why you’re here!”

The under-ripe coconut shaped like an elf giggled, “Oh, silly Celly! Don’t you remember? Aurora told you all our names and what we’d be doing, it was only just a few minutes ago.”

The principal gave the other woman (barely old enough in appearance and behavior to be called such, really) a glare so level you could use it for carpentry measurements, “I have relived Sunset Shimmer’s childhood through the lens of Hearth’s Warming and repeated the same four hours over and over again so much that I’ve lost count. Humor me.”

The girl had the sense to at least appear chagrined. “Okay, okay. I’m Alice Giftgiver, I know all about gifts that are yet to be given. And, really, Celly, even after Bori helped you out this year you’re still going to get the FS5 version of Cogs of Combat 6 next year?” The girl rolled her eyes and tsk’d, “OK Boomer.”

This is the last one, just get through this and you can go back to normal, just worrying about a teenaged interdimensional unicorn who happens to have been the protege to the ruler of a foreign nation...yes, ‘normal.’ she seethed to herself. Sighing, she said, “Very well, Alice. Can we at least go through the door by opening it this time?”

Alice giggle-snorted, “Oh, you’re funny!” so saying, she whipped out a glowing coil of rope and, disturbingly, pulled out a loop and started twirling it like Applejack had during her presentation in last year’s Family Appreciation Day and, for whatever reason, putting on a pair of mirror shades. “Where we’re going, we don’t need doors!” So saying, she threw the lasso at the back of the living room. It phased right through the ceiling and somehow settled itself around the mystery door, which had appeared once again on the back wall. Celestia was so focussed on the twinned impossibilities that she only noticed Alice had tied the rope around her midsection when she felt the rope snug right above her belt.

As though in protest, the door abruptly seemed to dislodge from the wall, then started sliding to the side. Celestia then realized that it wasn’t just sliding, it was rotating away, one edge sinking into the wall before the door started disappearing into the drywall. That the door was not damaging the wall was small comfort as she started sliding along the floor, her footwear doing nothing to keep her from being hauled with the portal. Her brain finally caught up with this development, “Wait, what?!”

Just as Celestia was yanked off her feet, Alice waved and said, “See you on the flip side!”

Celestia had absolutely no shame for screaming in terror as she plummeted toward the wall, a sensation of plunking through like a stone in a puddle, her awareness suddenly went to nothing.

Sunset was enjoying one of the quiet times that weren’t rare for her, but she still had learned to savor them over the years. Perhaps it was a hold-over from her time as Celestia’s student when you had to cherish what little free time you had between studies and political obligations. Or maybe it was a habit she picked up as a high school student when she had to play catch-up in things specific to her new adopted home like history and computers while forwarding her schemes for ascendance and vengeance, and then when she’d abandoned those juggling friendships. Then again, it could be a leftover from her time spent as a costumed hero on that world (something she still did from time to time when she spent enough time around her friends away from the bar) because crime was a 24/7 business, and so crime stoppers had to manage their time and stress levels, so “time outs” became absolutely critical to her well being.

Whatever the case, she was quite content to simply let time pass as she had some music blaring through the bar (Beethoven’s 10th), a good book in her hands (The Half-Moon Hollow chronicles, on actual bound paperback...OK, they were silly romance books, but c’mon, a girl gets to have a little trashy entertainment in her life!), and some snack chips and a soda.

As sudden as it was unexpected, the bell on the door went absolutely crazy. Sunset looked up from her book and gasped. All the picture frames had a face she had not expected to see...every single picture frame, including the ones that hadn’t had pictures in them moments before. The pictures were of Principal Celestia. She hadn’t had much call to visit with the woman since graduating high school, but naturally as similar as she was to the other Celestia in Sunset’s life she had inherited a bit of the relationship that Sunset had with the Princess. Through it all, the bell was still jangling like it was fighting to get off the mount.

Sunset scrambled around the bar and out to the entryway...to find the bell suddenly stilling. It still bobbed a little on the arm that held it over the door, evidence enough that she hadn’t imagined it, but it was otherwise silent.

Confused, she stepped back into the bar and saw that all the picture frames were back to normal; the several dozen that had been filled with pictures she had taken were once again showing those pictures, and the empty frames were once again empty.

Sunset put her hand on her hip and scratched her head absently with the other hand as she pondered this new development.

Were Celestia forced to describe the experience of the world resolving itself around her, she’d have to say that it felt like she was being forced through silly putty that had been squeezed into a Celestia-shaped mold, frozen solid, kiln baked, and then held perfectly still while she was was rammed into the resulting shape. Oddly, not painful at all, just terrifically uncomfortable. As she fought her way through the disorientation, she blinked, trying to get her eyes to work properly to process her environment. She could tell she was seated in a chair, the air was still and warm, which seemed to indicate an interior space, and she heard...giggling?

Finally, her vision went from blurry and over-exposed to the sharp focus she was used to, and she realized she was at her dining table. A glance around and she recognized that, yes, she was in the breakfast nook attached to the kitchen. A medium-sized breakfast sat before her, which meant that this was probably Saturday, if this universe followed pattern with her own. As for the giggling, she looked across the table to see her sister and Sunset Shimmer practically sitting in each other’s laps and touching in ways that her mother would probably not be happy with having at the dining table.

Unwilling to let the awkward experience of her student and her sister...canoodling in front of her, she noisily cleared her throat.

...and made a mental note to never use the word “canoodling” again, even in her thoughts. Really, Celestia? she scolded herself, you’re going to sound like that old nag on the other side of the mirror if you keep that up.

Sunset at least had the courtesy to look abashed, “Oh, uh, right. Sorry, Celestia, but we’re just so excited about the wedding!”

WEDDING?! she mentally shrieked. Doing her best to keep herself calm without showing any of her usual outward signs, she plastered a smile on her face, “Yes, well, this is still the breakfast table. Perhaps you two should finish eating and that would allow you to take your…” she allowed a pregnant pause, hoping to find the right words.

“Public displays of affection?” offered Sunset with an impish smile.

“...yes, that, to your room?” the suggestion that they go to a room, as in singular, was a stab in the dark on her part. If they were this affectionate at the dinner table she couldn’t imagine that they were sleeping in separate rooms.

Luna hadn’t shown even the slightest bit of contrition throughout the dialog. “Well, we usually do, but then last night you banged on our door and told us to quiet down, so I figured that we just needed to stay quiet enough and that would be sufficient.” So saying, she slid her arm around Sunset’s shoulders with just enough suggestiveness to be somewhat provocative.

Oh, it is on sister! thought Celestia, allowing herself to get into the game of sibling rivalry, “Right in front of my cereal!?” she snipped. Please let that be a meme in this universe...and that it’s not too ‘dank.’ To her relief, the two lovers broke out into cackling mirth, proving that some things were just inevitable no matter the timeline.

The moment of familial camaraderie was interrupted by the buzzing of Luna’s phone vibrating against the table. Luna picked it up and gave it a flick, which was apparently the prompt for a tiny holographic display to pop into existence above the device. She could read the text in the message box, though since it was for Luna she was seeing it in mirror-reverse. Something about a...raid for the wedding reception? Luna gave a snort of amused irritation as she stood and pocketed the phone, “It seems the Nightmare Moon is needed in-game to make some arrangements with the admin of Bar23 for the online reception. Since we don’t have anything planned until this afternoon, do you mind if I log-on and get this out of the way?” The question was directed to Sunset.

“Of course not, love. Go knock some heads together.” she replied with a grin.

Luna kissed the younger woman on the lips and grabbed her coffee cup. Downing the remainder with a single gulp as she dropped her dishes in the sink, she padded down the hall to the room that, in her own universe, was Sunset’s, but was clearly intended for Luna’s game systems or computer in this universe.

Smiling slightly, Celestia turned to focus on Sunset Shimmer and found herself staring down the barrel of a gun. Beyond the gun was the orange hand that held it, coming out of the cuff of a leather trenchcoat that hadn’t been on the body of the person in the seat across from her moments before. Indeed, much about that body had changed in the brief moment that Celestia had watched her sister leave the room. This person was recognizably Sunset, just older. Some tiny scars could be seen that Celestia normally associated with veterans of combat arenas that had been in heavy fire-fights where the hot brass of bullet casings would nick against the skin and burn while the recipient of the burns was more focussed on survival. From the neckline down, futuristic armor covered the woman’s torso as far down as could be seen with the table in the way. The woman was poised, holding the gun as though she had held it and similar all her life. Deep auburn hair with golden streaks fell to her shoulders in a familiar way, though much shorter than Celestia was used to seeing.

“That magic surge was so strong I’d be surprised if Princess Twilight didn’t feel it back in Equestria,” said this much more mature version of Sunset, “Now how about you tell me who you are and what you’re doing in Celestia’s body before I have to explain to my fiance why I had to kill her sister?”

Celestia’s hands shot up to shoulder height in surrender. “Oh, boy…” was all she managed to squeak out.

After Celestia was able to get her adrenal response to let her have full access to her frontal cortex and vocal cords, she did her best to hastily explain. “...and so then I’m suddenly here, apparently in the body of your Celestia and have no idea what I’m doing here.”

The woman, who insisted she be referred to as ‘Desert Mirage’ when in this form, shook her head with a hint of a smile. “Well, that’s not horrible, but hopefully we get our Celestia back when this woman who sent you here takes you on to whatever the next leg of your journey is.”

The universe-hopper slumped her chin on her fist and gently pushed the plate and bowl in front of her away. After having a gun stuck in her face she had lost her appetite, “I certainly hope so, too. I just wish I knew what this one wanted. Bori was a nightmare.”

“Aawww, but she likes you!” came a voice from somewhere in the direction of the refrigerator. Both women turned in surprise, Desert Mirage drawing two weapons this time and slowly sweeping them side to side. As though walking through smoke, Alice walked into the room straight through the wall. She wore an outfit that screamed, “I’m loud and tacky and I don’t care that I’m assaulting your eyes.” The jacket and pants were silver Lamé, worn over a bright orange button-up shirt. A bolo tie completed the ensemble, and all Celestia could think was that any version of Rarity (even the space-octopus) would have had a grand-mal seizure just being in the same room with the thing. In one hand Alice carried an honest-to-Faust “stogie” cigar, and in the other was a brightly colored device that looked like someone heard what a smartphone might look like once and designed a device that almost, but not quite, completely ignored that description. Out of Lego.

Before Alice could continue or Celestia could respond, Desert Mirage drew twinned beads on the elf. “Don’t move, I’m a very good shot and you’ve made my trigger finger extremely twitchy!” the gunslinger snapped.

This brought Alice up short. “Wait, you can see me?!”

“You can see her?!” gasped Celestia at the same time.

Mirage sighed and looked side-eyed at Celestia, “Lemme guess, she’s with you? The ‘Alice’ woman you were talking about?”

Alice snorted, “Well...fine, you can see me. Doesn’t mean you can shoot me!” the young woman stuck her tongue out at Mirage.

Raising an eyebrow, the gunslinger “holstered” her weapons and walked up to the elf. While she did so, pony ears manifested and her hair grew out to nearly the back of her knees and somehow manifested as a knotted pony-tail. A hint of wings started to twinkle into existence just as Mirage flicked Alice’s ear. At the dimensional traveller’s startled, “Ow!” Desert Mirage dismissed whatever magic caused the long hair, wings, and pony features and she returned to a normal human appearance.

“If I can flick you, I can shoot you.” Desert Mirage growled. Alice paled, her earlier bravado completely gone.

Celestia sighed, “Sunset, stop being antagonistic…”

“It’s ‘Desert Mirage’ while I’m like this, I told you that.”

A fourth voice pierced the awkward conversation, “Is everything alright with you two?”

Celestia and Desert Mirage flinched and turned to see Luna. The blue skinned woman wore a pensive look on her face as she stood in the arch of the doorway to the bedrooms, blinking somewhat muzzily at the light streaming in from the windows, as though she’d been taking a nap.

Celestia and Mirage looked at each other, looked at Alice, then back at Luna.

For her part, Luna simply grew more agitated, “So there I am negotiating with the virtual caterers, when to my surprise I’m notified that my dear, beloved Desert Mirage has logged on. No messages, just suddenly online. The last time that happened the school nearly got flattened by a boss-mob.” Now she glared at the two, “So anyone want to tell me what’s going on?”

For a moment Celestia and Mirage were at a loss for words, how does one explain a situation so bizarre? Alice saved them the trouble, as Luna suddenly gasped and leapt back, eyes clearly focussed on the woman that, to Luna, appeared out of thin air. Alice slumped down, temperamentally flounced her way over to the living room and collapsed into one of the couch seats. “My sisters make this look so easy!” she whined. With a sigh, she put the stogie in her mouth and inhaled, followed by immediately hacking and coughing, tossing the cigar away in disgust. Before the lit tobacco product could hit the carpet, it puffed from existence in a burst of sparkles. “Bleh! How do people smoke those things?!”

Celestia sighed again and waved her sister into the room, “Take a seat Luna and...just let me tell the whole story before you react to any part of it. I’d rather not have another weapon pointed at me today.”

Luna wouldn’t stop staring, and it was beginning to make Celestia uncomfortable.

“Wait,” began Desert Mirage, “I just figured it out!” she slapped her knee and pointed at Alice almost accusingly but with a triumphant smile on her face, “The Gift Givers of the Grove! I knew I’d heard your name before! It was such an odd name for a pony that it stood out in my memory from all the Hearth’s Warming stories when I was a filly!”

Celestia began staring right back at this version of her sister. She wasn’t going to let a little thing like this being an entirely different universe get in the way of being Sibling Supreme.

Alice snorted indignantly. “Well of course it’s not a normal pony name, we’re reindeer!”

Luna’s stare morphed into a glower.

Desert Mirage waved her hand dismissively, “We’re getting away from the topic, that being what you did with our Celestia.”

Celestia crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at Luna.

Alice shrugged, “Technically, she’s still right there,” she pointed at Celestia, “Just sorta...packed away. It’s like she’s sleeping, but she’ll remember what happened while the Celestia I brought along for the ride is in her body. That does mean that the travelling Celestia has full access to this universe’s Celestia, just not...instinctual access.”

Luna snorted explosively, which turned into relaxed laughter. Celestia gave her a relieved smile and turned back to the conversation, “What do you mean? I certainly don’t remember what happened to this Celestia yesterday. I remember trying to get the Hearth’s Warming decorations up while Luna was plugged into her Amusphere...no, wait, Sunset was in her room and depressed…” Celestia’s brows knit together as she struggled to keep two sets of memories separate in her head.

Luna relaxed at this, “Well, I am sorry, but you really should have told me you were pulling out the decorations before I went in. You know the game still doesn’t have a chat function for people outside.”

“Luna, we talked about…” she paused as she started to trip over two similar sets of responses that tried to come out of her brain at the same time. “We’ll talk about this later...or the me that belongs in this universe will talk about this later.”

“The point,” interrupted Mirage, “Is that our Celestia is still just fine and still right here and we’ll get her back when you guys leave.” Her bearing relaxed as she turned an inquisitive gaze at Celestia. “Do you have a different relationship with your Luna than these two?” she waggled a finger between the two sisters before shaking her head, “It is weird to be talking about someone who’s here but not…”

Celestia looked at her sister in curiosity and Luna bit her lip and her eyes flickered about, as though to pre-emptively prevent eye contact. “Ah, well….” began the younger woman, “Back when we defeated Sombra and you and I decided that you should move in with us to save you money on apartment rent Celestia and I had a little talk and decided that we should, ah, put our usual sisterly squabbles to a minimum while you were around.” As Celestia’s visage morphed into a scowl, Luna grew huffed, “Oh, don’t start that with me, Miss 'Harmonious Household’!”

The taller sister took a turn to sniff indignantly, “Oh, and I suppose Dr. Canon never published his paper on the negative effects of suppressing disagreements in a household under the guise of false civility in this universe?”

Luna’s irritated confusion etched her face, “Dr. Canon? Who is that?”

“Doctor Head Canon, pioneered his field by studying his own family’s interactions to publish his graduating thesis from medical school. The first of his family to go into a field that wasn’t publishing books or the military.”

Luna rolled her eyes, “Oh, him. Yeah, he published, but all his theories were dismissed as toxic when the Japanese government revealed that they found out that the creator of SAO practically worshiped Canon’s work. Apparently based half his notion of turning a game into a real-life bloodsport from the thesis of,” and here Luna provided ‘air quotes’ with her fingers, “‘Needing to express your hostile emotions in plain view of those who might benefit from observing normal humans resolve problems in real-time rather than through the distorted lense of only ever seeing people from the perspective of the public facade they present to the world,’ End quote.” the darker skinned woman closed her eyes and swallowed in disgust, “I knew some trans-folk who killed themselves even after surviving that hell because their avatars had been stripped away and their so-called ‘real’ bodies were exposed to the world. They were horrified when they were outed by that madman’s philosophy.”

It was Celestia’s turn to be confused, “Ess-Ayee-Oh? What are you talking about?”

The room got quiet. Luna stared at her sister and Celestia had trouble placing the expression. Desert Mirage abruptly shifted back into the form of Sunset Shimmer and became fascinated with her hands. Even Alice grew somber. When she looked back to Luna, she realized where she had seen that expression. It was one of envy, and she hadn’t really seen it on Luna’s face since high school, and even back then it was tinged with anger, where this current envy was filled with sorrow. “...I think...I think I’d like to live in a world where SAO never happened. We have to teach about that event in schools, and we still get parents protesting about it.”

“Short-sighted assholes!” snapped out Sunset, “Might as well teach that World War 2 never happened!”

“Will someone please explain ‘SAO’ to me?” exclaimed Celestia.

Luna sat back, “Sweetheart,” she said over her shoulder to Sunset, “Can you get Celestia’s calming tea? This explanation will probably take a while…”

So Luna explained; first about the NRVGear headsets (“They strapped microwave emitters to their heads?!” Celestia protested indignantly), then about Sword Art Online. About the first waves of hundreds dying from well-meaning family and friends pulling off the headsets or shutting down the computers only to wind up frying the brains of the very people they were trying to save, then about the hundreds more dying as they grinded their way through the game levels in an attempt to defeat the monster that had trapped them in the game. They told about the comparatively minor headlines that announced the deaths of people who hadn’t been found before their bodies shut down from malnutrition while their minds were trapped in games of life and death and the especially tragic cases where a random computer failure or power fluctuation would trigger the battery backup in the headsets and cook the brains of the unfortunate souls. They told about the heroic but ultimately futile efforts of dozens of companies, hacker groups, and government agencies that all attempted to break into the game or disable the hardware without causing even more deaths.

Then they explained the fallout that happened after, about the government inquiries, the near brushes with outright war as some countries threatened others over the fallout, the days of mourning, the post-game suicides, the accidents where people forgot that the things they could do in-game couldn’t be done in real life and would fall to their deaths or step in front of traffic. They told Celestia about the shocking announcement that a new game with different hardware was released and the even further shock when many of the players that escaped SAO jumped right back into Gun Gala Online.

This, of course, led to a much less painful retelling of the game that brought together Sunset Shimmer and Luna as a couple, and incidentally also gave Sunset a whole new power-set and a much more diverse group of friends. By the time Celestia had finished her third cup of tea and the group had ordered pizza for dinner, she was frankly a touch overwhelmed. “Goodness; do you suppose that my Sunset is the same age as you?”

Sunset leaned back with a slice of pizza, automatically accepting the paper plate that Luna supplied, it was clear that the two had done that routine so many times that they thought nothing of it. “I’d imagine so, given what you’ve told me of your trip through her past Hearth’s Warmings.” she got a slightly nostalgic look in her eye as she quickly took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. “Ponyfeathers, but I do miss Hearth’s Warming. Not that Christmas is bad,” she reassured Luna, who merely snorted in amusement as she took a sip of soda, “But spending time with Celestia around the tree, drinking hot cocoa and getting into snowball fights...I’ll always cherish the last couple years with my new family,” she reached over and lovingly clasped Luna’s hand, “But there’s just something about the holidays as a filly that…” a happy sigh escaped her lips as she smiled at her lover.

Luna quirked a smile at her, “Well, this year’s Christmas celebration is somewhat overshadowed by the wedding in January, but I certainly wouldn’t object to visiting your homeworld this time next year.”

Unwilling to interrupt the exchange between her former student and her sister, Celestia turned to Alice, “So, when do we leave? Not that this hasn’t been fun, but if the point was to learn what Sunset is supposed to get for her Hearth’s Warming present, I’m afraid I’m at a loss…”

“Eh,” grunted Alice around a bite of pizza, “We’ll call this one a mulligan. A ‘practice run’ kinda thing.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” scolded Luna.

Alice gave her a flat stare and pointedly chewed and swallowed. “The point is, we’re leaving soon, and next time hopefully we won’t set off, like, all the alarms.”

Sunset shifted back to Desert Mirage. “Hey, it sounds like you’ve got a busy night ahead of you if everything else you’ve told me is any indication,” she said to Celestia, “Let me give you something for your trip.” She hopped up and ran down the hallway.

Celestia glanced to Luna, who shrugged, just as befuddled. There was a prickle of energy that suddenly thrummed through the atmosphere before Mirage jogged back into the room. Without pausing, she handed Celestia a belt. It was recognizable as such in that it was a strap about as long as Sunset was tall, about as wide as a measuring stick, and had a recognizable buckle on one end. “Here,” she said as she handed the belt to Celestia, “It should automatically change size to fit you.”

Celestia stood, impressed at the claim and even more so when the belt did, indeed, size to fit her perfectly as she latched the buckle. Abruptly, a small screen appeared in front of her, holographically like the display for Luna’s phone had earlier. It showed some icons that looked like food and what was either some form of exotic blue liquor or, “...is that a health potion?” she waved her hand in front of her face, trying to interact with the display.

Luna giggled as Sunset blushed and caught Celestia’s hand. “No, it’s a heal buff, the icon just looks like a healing potion because the interface designers…” she trailed off as she saw Celestia’s confused look, “Never mind, yes, it’s a healing potion. I topped off the inventory slots available in the belt, so you should have easy access to it at any time. If this jumps universes with you, it’ll probably be really handy to have. Let me help you out with that, I’m probably the only person who can even see that display in this universe.” So saying, she transformed into her Desert Mirage persona and started guiding Celestia through the motions necessary to access her inventory.

“Don’t forget to show her how to stow something in inventory. If it’s got the most recent patch updates from the devs, it will have an auto-pickup feature, but even so she should know how to put stuff in as well as get it out.” pointed out Luna.

After about half an hour of instruction, the four stood in the living room, the two from another world facing the two who would soon be welcoming back their family member. “Well,” said Alice, “We’re ready, time to say goodbyes,” she turned to Celestia, “Make it count, if this goes right for the rest of the night you won’t be able to even tell people you’re not their Celestia, let alone wish them well.”

Heart heavy, Celestia turned and pulled Luna into a hug. “I’ve seen so many versions of you tonight...but every one of you is just as much my sister as the one I live with.”

Luna had warmed considerably to her temporary sibling, “Who knows, maybe one day we’ll come visit. Twilight Sparkle is making great strides in her research in jumping universes without the mirror.”

Celestia left the embrace and turned to face Desert Mirage, “Any advice on this gift I’m supposed to get my Sunset?”

To her surprise, Mirage pulled her into an equally emotional hug as her sister, “Find a way to let her know that she’s your Sunset. If she’s anything like me at all, she’s probably convinced she doesn’t have anybody and that she’s just imposing.” She stepped back and held Celestia’s shoulders, “I thought my friends didn’t really care about me because I thought they just saw me as a job to do, a task from Princess Twilight. It took them basically bringing me back from the dead to realize that I was much, much more to them than that. I don’t regret what happened in the end,” she released her former teacher and reached out to clasp Luna’s hand, “But if I had known from the start that I wasn’t just someone’s ‘chore,’ that I was surrounded by people who loved me, I may not have ‘died’ in the first place.”

Celestia blinked her suddenly wet eyes, smiling comfortingly to the cross-dimensional reflection of her student. She realized she no longer felt weirded out by Sunset marrying her sister in this universe, they clearly fit like hand-in-glove.

A sudden sniffle from the elfin woman to her side caused her to start slightly, “Okay, this is hitting me right in the feels! Time to go!” So saying, she started tapping buttons on her hand-held device, it letting out horribly jarring squeaks and squawks with each press, before tapping the surface facing her with a flourish.

Celestia turned to wave one final time before the world turned white.

Luna and Desert Mirage blinked at the suddenly bright white light that seemed to simultaneously swipe from side to side and explode outward at the same time. It took a mere second or two to fade, and the horribly dressed woman was gone. Celestia groaned and slumped, apparently unable to hold herself up.

Both women darted forward and caught their family member before she hit the floor. Celestia gasped in shock at being caught and suddenly clapped her hand over her eyes. “Oh, my head!” she slurred, “What happened? We were just eating breakfast and now I’m nearly passed out in the living room…”

Luna pillowed Celestia’s head with her lap as Desert Mirage turned back into Sunset Shimmer as she helped the taller woman straighten out from the tangle she had fallen into, “It’s OK, Celestia,” said Sunset, “You were just hit with a bit of a benign magic wammy. If you don’t start remembering what happened soon, Luna and I can explain it to you.”

Luna reached over to the nearby sofa and pulled off a pillow and throw and started situating her sister to be more comfortable. She looked up to Sunset, “Do you think she’ll be alright?”

Sunset tipped her head slightly to subtly direct Luna’s attention to Celestia’s waist. The belt that had been there was now gone. “Yeah,” said Sunset after a moment, “I think she’ll be fine.”

Celestia’s consciousness manifested with a blink of her eyes. Something was subtly different and wrong and she was having a hard time figuring out what.

Looking around at her surroundings, she realized that she was, thankfully, alone. Ah, good, I can at least get my bearings before having to BS my way through this. She took in the room and nearly fainted. Principal Celeste’s parents may have nicely secured their daughters’ financial future, but this Celestia (hopefully the name was the same) was clearly more wealthy than Logic Gates, Park Keeper, Peace Maker, and the rest of the world’s richest top ten combined. Artifacts that may or may not be magical were tucked into nooks on the walls, books of vintages ranging from this year’s best sellers to volumes that had to be at least three centuries old lined the bookshelves. Every last stick of furniture, every piece of trim and join of the room, even the clothing she was wearing spoke of high care, high value, and high price. And the unavoidable feeling of age steeped every surface. All of it was well cared for with not a spec of dust to be found, but she couldn’t shake the idea that this room may have been in existence in its current state longer than she’d been alive.

And a harpy had just tackled a dryad through the doorway, knocking the doubtless century-old globe off its stand.

Fortunately, the sphere seemed to be made of some fairly sturdy material, as it clanged hollowly against the thin carpet covering the hardwood floor and rolled away from the squabbling duo. “Quitit!” and “Makeme!” and variants thereof came from the bruhaha, along with a few select curse words.

Celestia cleared her throat, and the fight abruptly stopped. The tableau was so comical that the humor overwhelmed what little shock she could still feel at this latest weirdness. The harpy was very clearly Rainbow Dash, her arms replaced with wings and her legs resembling those of a bird of prey, complete with inch-long razor-sharp talons. Said talons were provably razor-sharp because the dryad’s...skin? Bark? ...was covered in parallel grooves, visible through the slashed clothing the dryad wore. Said dryad could only be Applejack, though the vines making up the girl’s hair had at first thrown Celestia’s recognition until she realized the hat laying off to the side where it had been knocked off was AJ’s signature cowgirl hat. Rainbow had some of Applejack’s hair-slash-vines in her mouth, one talon in the middle of the dryad’s back and the other pinning her opponent’s backside down and eyes staring in wide, panicked fear at Celestia. Applejack was similarly frozen, one arm pushing herself up and a leg cocked to get ready to power-lift herself off the floor.

From the hallway came a familiar voice, “RAINBOW, AJ!” Sure enough, Sunset stormed into the room, “It’s bad enough that you’re always goading each other on, you could have broken something...oh, uh…” the teen looked at Celestia and suddenly went from ‘angry and imposing authority figure’ to ‘little girl caught breaking a rule.’ “Hey, mom…” Celestia’s throat tightened up as she struggled to not react to this revelation of their relationship in this universe, “...I’m sure that Applejack and Rainbow Dash are very sorry and won’t ever do it again and oh man I’m so grounded and I’ll just go tell my friends the sleepover is canceled and get the toothbrush and bathroom cleaner…”

Celestia had to suppress a giggle, “Sunset, perhaps you should let your friends speak for themselves?”

Sunset’s unusually pale cheeks were tinged with a hint of a blush, “Right, sorry, shutting up.” So doing, she stepped aside and let her friends disentangle from each other and stand at something resembling attention.

Hat in hand, a tattered Applejack just barely started saying, “Sorry ma’am…” when the clip-clopping of hooves on wood could be heard from outside the room.

“...roughhousing like a pair of hooligans, completely ignoring proper decorum, especially in the house of a vampire lord...oh!” the voice interrupted itself as Rarity, this version a satyr with a unicorn horn stopped up short upon seeing Celestia.

Immediately on Rarity’s metaphorical heels came a...giant pink golden retriever. Or at least a wolf that could easily be mistaken for being a giant pink golden retriever. And this would be… Celestia began the thought. “Girls! Are we play wrestling?! Can I join...oh, uh, hi again Miss Celestia.” ...yup, Pinkie Pie. The universe-hopper had to make an actual effort to keep herself from slapping her own face in exasperation at the multiverse manifesting Pinkie Pie in such a way that mirrored her own thoughts back when the mess with Sunset started in her own universe.

That a fairy-winged Fluttershy swept through the door in Pinkie’s wake wasn’t surprising, but a very human-looking Twilight Sparkle was a shock, though this one was quite different from the one that had saved the school during the Fall Formal. The casual confidence the princess had carried wasn’t there, in its place was a nervous fidgeting and a tendency to try to hide herself in with the background much as Fluttershy was doing. The addition of the horn-rimmed glasses made it easy for Celestia to separate this person from the princess in her mind, however.

She realized that they were all staring at her, as though waiting for her to pronounce judgement. Smiling in amusement and having no idea what she was supposed to do, she opened her mouth to speak…

...only to be preempted by a Luna that was so pale as to appear ashen, where the whites of her eyes should be was only blood red, and a pair of rather deadly looking fangs dropped from her upper jaw line. The fangs were obvious because Luna was grinning so widely that any nearby prey animal was sure to panic. Indeed, she was dragging a bleating goat by a lead in one hand and a rather long utilitarian knife in the other. “Sister! It took herculean effort, but I managed to procure the traditional sacrificial goat for the annual solstice celebration!”

Poor Fluttershy bleated in alarm herself, fluttering off the floor nervously. Twilight Sparkle paled and put her hands to her mouth. Rarity turned green while Applejack and Rainbow Dash turned to each other in confusion. Only Pinkie didn’t seem negatively affected, panting in excitement. For her part, Sunset smacked a hand to her face, “Auntie Luna, we don’t sacrifice goats anymore!”

Celestia smiled, in a combination of amusement and relief, closing her mouth and tilting her head toward Sunset while keeping her eyes on her sister.

Luna deflated like a leaky balloon. “...but...no sacrifice…? ‘Twas my favorite part of Solstice…”

Seeing this apparently bloodthirsty vampire wilt was as heartbreaking as it was disturbing. Then again, she thought, If Luna is a vampire and still my sister, it’s likely that I am too… “Sunset, why don’t you take Luna with you, along with your friends except for Applejack and Rainbow Dash, and explain how Solstice has changed since Luna last had a chance to celebrate. Perhaps you could help her find a new favorite part of the holiday?”

The two troublemakers gulped audibly as Sunset sighed in something akin to relief. She gave her two friends who were to remain sympathetic looks as she led the way from the room. “Fluttershy, can you help the poor goat calm down a bit? Twilight, can you help me with the human perspective on history? I admit the Monster perspective is a bit...skewed…”

Celestia felt a bubble of pride as she watched her daughter in this universe take the lead so naturally. Luna remained crestfallen as Pinkie swept the vampire onto her back and carried her like a strange mount. “Don’t worry, Loonie,” began the werewolf, “I know lots of fun traditions for Solstice! Just leave it to your Auntie Pinkie to help you find a new favorite!”

Luna glared down at the pink furred shoulders she had found herself riding, “I’m several hundred years older than you!”

Rarity couldn’t quite hide the giggle at her friend’s antics as she fell in at the rear of the group. She paused at the door and curtsied to Celestia, pulling the door closed without a word.

She returned her attention to the remaining two, who gave all the appearance of two of her students caught doing something they shouldn’t and sweating bullets at being hauled into the principal's office. This, at least, was familiar ground. “Applejack, please return my globe to it’s stand.”

The wood nymph nodded and rushed over to where the globe came to a rest and hefted it with the casual strength Celestia had grown accustomed to from across the multiverse. Rainbow was distracted with watching her friend set the sphere back where it belonged, so Celestia took a moment to take “inventory” of herself, starting with issuing the mental command to her belt to show her actual inventory status. The belt’s HUD popped up in her eyesight, invisible to the other two in the room. Seeing the status of the rations and healing “buffs” (as Sunset had called them) at the same level as before, she dismissed the display and ran her tongue over her teeth in her upper jaw. Sure enough, her canine teeth were quite a bit sharper than the other teeth, and she could feel an additional ridge in her gum line where the teeth would recede when she wasn’t feeding.

Thus it was no surprise when she absently picked up a mug that had been sitting on a warming plate and took a sip without giving much thought to what she’d be drinking...and discovered that she was drinking blood. She only barely kept herself from spitting it out, and found her vampire senses were practically begging her to drink more, faster, now. While as a human she found the taste of blood to be far too coppery and nauseating to do anything but make her want to retch (she was the principal of a high school, she’d caught the business end of a flying fist to her face or five when breaking up fights in the hallways), as a vampire it was like her favorite tea, a mug of hot chocolate, and the most delicious wine all in one.

Delicious vintage, human, in their 40’s unless I miss my guess, needs more iron in their diet but otherwise healthy, voluntarily given as there’s no hint of the sour taste of epinephrine, her subconscious supplied for her. Trailing along with that thought was a cascade of memories and facts about a full stable of humans that served her and her sister in their capacity as Vampire Lords. Humans that preferred the protection of a powerful monster over trying their luck in the walled cities that had sprung up over the last two centuries since they’d been recognized by the monster races as more than livestock. Celestia herself had kept herself out of the push for Human Rights, but it took a rather intense trauma to get her involved. She was grateful she had, because she now had Sunset. Sunset Shimmer who, to her absolute heart-bursting pride, had fought convention and social convenience to befriend a human from one of the human shelter-cities in the form of Twilight Sparkle.

All of this slammed into her head in rapid-fire, threatening to overwhelm her in just the seconds it took Applejack to finish re-mounting the globe and return to her position in front of Celestia’s desk. Disguising her disorientation with the action of putting her mug down on it’s warming plate, she leaned on her desk with her elbows. “Let me ask you two, how is Sunset doing? I know being my daughter is probably interfering with her social life.”

The seemingly off-topic question served its purpose and she used their confusion to gather her thoughts and stem the flood of a dozen centuries of memories vied for dominance in her head. As Applejack started speaking, stammering out her reassurances that Sunset’s social life was just fine, a white slit opened up in reality behind her. In less than a second, it slid up to a door-shaped portal flooding Celestia’s vision with bright white light, and a silhouette of a humanoid was visible. The silhouette stepped through the door, which slid shut behind them, and without the blast of light blinding her, Celestia could see that it was Alice. The woman was once again wearing clothes that stung the fashion sense, if not the eyes. A lime green suit over a horrifically neon pink shirt and a bow-tie nearly the size of her head. Instead of a cigar, she was bouncing a lollipop about in her mouth, sucking on it as though she were chewing on a stogie.

Celestia fought the urge to shake her head in irritation at the woman as she tuned her awareness back to the pair of youths before her. “...an’ honestly, Miss Celestia, I know people think there’s somethin’ fishy going on with you adoptin’ Sunset, but from what I see the people that matter most don’t see nuthin’ but what it is, you love your daughter an’ that’s all that matters.”

Rainbow Dash nodded, “Yeah! And the best part is she’s really awesome, too! I don’t know how a regular human turned into such an awesome vampire, but she’s super smart and helps us all out with our homework, she even finds ways to help with Flight School stuff that she doesn’t know anything about!”

Smiling with satisfaction and ignoring Alice, who was raising a curious eyebrow at the two monsters being interrogated by Celestia, she said, “And do you think Sunset is proud of the friends she’s made?”

This time the two realized exactly what the older woman was doing with her question and they both hung their heads in shame. Applejack spoke up, “Well, I mean...I know she wants to be...and she probably loves bein’ able to have Rarity and Fluttershy around, she can’t seem to get too much time with Twilight, and even Pinkie only ever means well, but I take yer meanin’...”

A dispirited Rainbow Dash spoke up then, “I...yeah, I’m sorry. I’ll go apologize to her as soon as we’re done here. If...if you want me to go home now I will.” The poor girl looked heartbroken, having the bearing of someone who wanted to stay by the side of someone they couldn’t imagine ever hurting, but realizing that their very presence was causing problems.

Celestia sighed, I’d say this lesson has been delivered, “No, I don’t think that would do any good, and it’s clear Sunset would only think that she had done something wrong if I sent you home. For now, just do your best to respect the home of your hostess...and by that I meant Sunset, since she’s the one that invited you over. Please show her how much you care about her by making this Solstice holiday a good memory for her.”

With a relieved sigh, the pair fled the room, Applejack gently tugging the door shut behind her.

Alice took the opportunity to speak up, “So the principal’s work is never done, huh?”

Celestia pinched the bridge of her nose and heaved a sigh, “So what am I in this universe for? I’ve already figured out that it’s mostly monsters and had a big memory dump that gave me some information.”

Alice looked a bit surprised and started stabbing at her tablet-like device, “Oh, well then you already know a lot of what I was going to tell you. Pretty much all that’s left is this Celestia, well, she feels like she’s just kinda going through the holiday motions. She wants it to be a good Solstice for her daughter, but she kinda lost the holiday spirit when her sister was sealed away by a monster hunter a thousand years ago. Now she’s gotta give her daughter and her sister a good holiday, but doesn’t feel like she can properly deliver.”

Celestia scrunched her eyebrows together, “So what am I supposed to do about it? I haven’t the faintest clue how to celebrate Solstice in this universe!”

Alice just threw a dead-pan look at her, “If someone had come to you and told you that their Hearth’s Warming was going to be absolutely ruined if they can’t get their precious dolls bought from the store by tonight and the only thing that can save the holiday is to have some Wacky Hijinks that culminates in them finally getting the MacGuffin Dolls from their grumpy neighbor or something, what would you tell them?”

Celestia just glared at Alice, “I’d tell them they watched too many Applewood movies about the holiday when they were a kid.”

“Exactly!” replied the gift giver, “The holidays aren’t about all the stuff we do that surrounds the day, it’s about the people we spend it with and finally being a family!”

Before they could continue, Luna burst through the door, “SISTER, THE PINK ONE IS TRYING TO GET ME TO DRESS IN A RIDICULOUS RED AND WHITE OUTFIT!” So declared, she ran behind the desk and huddled behind Celestia’s office chair.

Rarity poked her head in shortly after, flinching slightly as Pinkie’s voice could be heard in the background calling for ‘Loonie’ to stop playing hide and seek, “I do apologize, Miss Celestia. It seems that Pinkie has gotten into one of her...moods.”

The older woman sighed and stood. “Alright, let’s see what needs to be done to salvage this mess,” she said with a wink to Rarity.

Several hours later, they were gathered around a spectacularly stout yule log that the house servant (in the form of their loyal butler Carrion) was going to have to feed into the fireplace, which while gargantuan was still dwarfed by the tree that was brought in to burn for the holiday season. Pinkie had changed into her humanoid form and was straddling the unburned portion of the log, roasting (or rather burning) marshmallows. Rarity was positioned near the two vampire lords, mimicking the pair’s mannerisms without appearing fawning or sycophantic. Twilight hovered at Sunset’s side, and for Sunset’s part she was sharing a love seat with Celestia. On the other side of the yule log, Rainbow Dash had found a convenient perch in the form of a bust that had been given to Vampire Lord Celestia several centuries prior. Principal Celestia had dug through her counterpart’s memories enough to know that it was supposed to look like Celestia, but the vampire had secretly found it horribly ugly and would have no problem with the numerous gauges being left by the harpy’s claws. Fluttershy was tending the goat, who was now happily munching on some celery the house staff had managed to scrounge up. Pinkie’s jokes about “bloody bitters” went over everyone’s head but Celestia’s. On the one hand, it was nice to know that even as a vampire Sunset was a well-behaved enough teenager to avoid alcoholic beverages. On the other, she realized that this world might not even have had a Queen Bitters to have a drink named after her with tomato juice and celery as it’s distinguishing ingredients, which would have meant that Pinkie had made a joke strictly for her benefit.

She chose not to think about it too hard.

Applejack had taken to petting the yule log. When she’d been asked if the burning of the former tree was a problem for the wood nymph, Applejack shook her head with a bittersweet smile. “Naw,” she had said, “This here king of the forest had himself a good long run. He saw about twenty generations of his kids and knew his time had ‘bout come anyway. It’s makin’ the echo of his spirit happy to be used as part of a celebration ‘bout family and bringin’ the branches of the creature family tree together.”

The discussion about what “the echo of the spirit of the tree” was had taken the better part of an hour and a half, mostly with Twilight chasing down several lines of inquiry about how trees and wood spirits operated.

As midnight approached, the group was sharing the quiet, comfortable camaraderie of friends and family who actually enjoyed each other’s company. Not everyone had a chance at the spotlight for anything in particular, but that wasn’t necessary, as they all loved and supported each other equally.

After a bit, Celestia realized that Sunset was occasionally casting glances in her direction. She wasn’t seeing anyone else noticing this, and with a mental start realized that she was recognizing the behavior. This was far more subtle, but her own Sunset had taken to making similar glances in her direction of late. It happened when Sunset was feeling particularly in need of reassurance and support and couldn’t ask for it. Celestia realized that this Sunset may be wanting some form of intimate familial contact but was still not sure where the boundaries lay. She had stumbled onto a few memories of Vampire Lord Celestia watching Sunset grow up and realized that the girl was afraid of being rejected by her mother if she overstepped the bounds that she was used to when she was still just a human vassal.

Well, the vampire lord may be too old and stodgy to do anything about this, but I’m not, she thought to herself, making a little extra effort to burn the thought into her memory in hopes that she’d be somehow able to chastise the other version of herself when she “woke” after the principal hopped to the next universe. Almost casually, but feeling just a touch uncomfortable in pushing a relationship that wasn’t hers like she was about to, she gently reached her arm over the shoulders of Sunset Shimmer and pulled her close.

Sunset stiffened for just a moment, then smiled so broadly that her fangs dropped a smidge in reflex. Like a kitten she snuggled down against her mother’s side, and for all the girl cared in that moment the rest of the world could vanish into mist for a while.

Celestia smiled down at the girl and took a sip of her eggnog. Over the brim, she caught the slightly confused face of her sister and let a bit of a twinkle enter her gaze as she turned her sip into a quaff.

As she lowered her mug, she saw the smiling face of Alice. The elfin woman was standing pretty much in the fire but was untouched by it. The young woman nodded, “Bingo, that’s what you were here for.”

Celestia’s world went white.

Celestia felt the world resolve around her, then was immediately knocked off her feet and smacked her head against a solid object, thoroughly rattling her.

Cold… was her first thought. Wet, came shortly after. Where was she and what was she doing here? She found it hard to think with the pain ringing through her skull.

“Mom!” she heard Sunset’s voice cut through the disorientation. What’s Sunset doing here? Aren’t I in another universe? At least she’s talking finally, I wonder how we managed that?

It was about that time she realized she was somewhat concussed. She felt a pair of hands lift her head gently, feeling around for obvious injury.

“...Sunset...belt...lemme buff…” came tumbling out of her mouth as she absently waved a hand in front of her blurry vision. In stark contrast to the out of focus world around her, the belt’s HUD lit up starkly clear. She flailed her arm in the direction of the icon of the healing potion, almost accidentally slapping her limb through it, and activated the buff.

Instantly, the world slammed into focus and she could think clearly again. Over her was a very concerned Sunset Shimmer, older than the one in her home universe, but not nearly as grizzled as Desert Mirage had been. The pistol still held to the ready as the girl shifted her attention in battle-wariness showed that this Sunset wasn’t all that different from Desert Mirage, though. “Sunset…?” she blurted out.

The girl...no, young woman turned her full attention to Celestia. “Oh, thank god! How many fingers am I holding up?”

Before Celestia could answer, a familiar voice snapped through the crisp winter air, “Sunset Shimmer, you may be going to school for your nursing degree, but you aren’t one yet! Scoot your butt over and let a professional do her work!” Sunset was practically shoved out of the way by none other than Nurse Redheart. Practically bowling the younger woman over, Redheart’s face filled her vision. Holding up a hand with index and middle fingers in a ‘v’ shape, she said, “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Sunset glared at the nurse, “...really!?”

The bark of fully automatic weapons fire cut them off, the three of them turning to see Luna charging across the snow, weaving through stands of birch trees. She was focused on targets that Celestia couldn’t see, firing with a pair of MAC-10’s. As she ducked around a final tree she turned her attention to the group, “Sister, are you alright?”

Celestia waved off Redheart, somewhat disappointed that she could smell a rather strong alcohol on the woman, but as she didn’t know exactly what was going on, she chose not to comment on it. Sunset used her free hand to pick up a carbine rifle and hand it to Celestia, who took it with what she hoped was some sense of familiarity, the other three clearly saw nothing unusual about this version of her carrying a weapon like this. “I’m actually OK, blows to the head notwithstanding, what got m…oh!” she interrupted herself as she laid eyes on a rather desiccated looking corpse that had numerous bullet holes in it, including two through its skull. Disturbingly, she recognized the corpse as Sunset Shimmer. “...what?”

Sunset, in complete contrast to the full-grown bad-ass that was Celestia’s first impression, suddenly started mincing her feet, blushed tomato red, and refused to meet Celestia’s eyes. “Well, yeah, uh...there weren’t any clones of me last time, so I didn’t think we’d have to worry about it, and at least the clones aren’t carrying any weapons, that should make it easier to identify them, right?”

Celestia’s eyes widened, “Wait, ‘last time!’?”

A sharp, clipped voice interjected from behind, “Indeed. It seems your darling golden daughter has been neglecting to keep you fully updated on all her reports.” This statement was punctuated by the single bark of a fired bullet. Celestia whipped around to see a woman in a business suit, her only concession to the cold was a very formal, if stylish, looking winter coat. A quick glance in the direction the revolver the woman was now lowering had been aimed at showed a now dead Rainbow Dash with a single bullet hole between the eyes. It was only a minor comfort that the body decomposed far too quickly for it to be an actual human.

She turned back to the newcomer, “Nagatha…” she stated curtly. She honestly had no frame of reference at the moment. Every single person in this little group had a firearm, and they were all acting like it was completely normal to be killing apparent clones of her students. Of all the people she had expected to see as part of this motley crew, Nagatha Harshwhinney was probably near the bottom of the list.

Though speaking of clones, a trio of Pinkie Pies suddenly leapt from behind a hill, only to have one of them be speared through by a polearm wielded by a woman that looked to be about Sunset’s age with aquamarine blue skin and navy blue hair, an athletic build and wearing biking leathers. “Ember!” shouted Sunset as she pulled her second glock and fired on the remaining two Pinkies as they turned to face their nearest attacker. Harshwhinney and Luna opened fire as well, and before they could even take a step two more clones were turning into corpsicles.

Yanking her polearm out of the dead clone, the other young woman turned to the group, “Man, when you guys said you wanted to have a girl’s-only Christmas vacation, I had no idea it would be this much fun!” she cackled as she dragged the blade through the snow to wipe off the black liquid the clones used for blood, “My dad is gonna be so pissed he missed this!”

Celestia swore there was a buzzing in her ear for a moment, but was too busy trying to see any other threats around her to pay it any mind, until Sunset said, “So the clones can’t see you either? Good! I was worried that they could see past your...not-there-whatever since they were soulless abominations.”

Blinking in surprise, Celestia looked at her ‘daughter,’ then followed where the young woman was looking...to see a green skinned, green haired girl standing at her elbow. “FUCK!” she started and jumped two feet away.

The girl blinked, looking more irritated than anything else at Celestia’s reaction. The rest of the ladies around her giggled, even Harshwhinney’s mouth turned up at the corner. Sunset inadvertently came to her rescue, “Yeah, even we still forget Wallflower is there sometimes, and we live with her.”

As though to answer the question of who ‘we’ was, Applejack came leading a group of other young women, which consisted of a bespectacled Twilight Sparkle, a moderately curvy woman who looked to be about Sunset’s age in this universe with a spectacular poof of orange hair, and a bawling Fluttershy. “We lost Rainbow Dash,” announced Applejack grimly, “Plum fool took a handful of clones o’ me over a ridge with a full-on tackle. We looked down, but the forest floor was too thick to see any landin’. But from that height…” A glimpse from face to face revealed the dark truth to the words. As if Fluttershy’s face weren’t enough, even the apparent nonchalance of the other girl was betraying a few signs of distress.

Celestia felt a tug on her sleeve and turned in surprise to see the green skinned girl. Somehow, she had completely forgotten she was there in the few heartbeats since Applejack spoke. At least this time I didn’t nearly jump out of my skin, she thought, “Yes…?” she said simply, unable to remember the girl’s name.

“We should get back to the cabin. That’s where the girl that looks like Twilight is set up.”

At this both Sunset and Twilight were brought out of their shock at the news about Rainbow Dash. “You saw the Sparkle clone at the cabin?” exclaimed Sunset.

The girl nodded, “She’s doing the standard, ‘The world will see my brilliance,’ supervillain monologue with her army of clones as an audience. Oh, and she’s got wings.”

Twilight sniffed indignantly, “Not much of an audience, considering she’s powering them with her own soul.”

Harshwhinney’s left eyebrow went up, which Celestia recognized as an indicator that the woman was one good explanation away from tearing the recipient of the raised eyebrow a new superfluous orifice...metaphorically speaking. In her universe at any rate. “How long have you known this little tidbit of information?”

Seemingly oblivious to Nagatha’s darkened mood, Twilight explained, “Oh, well, after Sunset postulated earlier that the clones were different from the last batch we faced, both in number and in composition (the last determined after we killed the first one and were able to observe it’s decomposition), I theorized that they were created using a combination of what their original creator knew about making purely magical tulpa-like constructs using Equestrian methods and how I would approach the same problem using purely scientific methods and an awareness of Equestrian magic. From there it was fairly easy to deduce that…”

“Egghead, c’mon!” interrupted Ember, “It’s below freezing and we’re surrounded by zombies. Cut the technobabble!”

Twilight glared at Ember, “Don’t make me lecture you on the difference between…”

“Twilight,” interrupted Celestia, “I’m sorry but time does seem to be of the essence.”

The younger woman sighed, “Fine; while she is using magic to make them animate and probably to generate them from base materials, she’s likely using the biology texts we have to create the body templates, which means they don’t have any sort of independence. Like, well, traditional voodoo zombies instead of Frankenstein’s Monster.” The context of the statement let Celestia translate ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’ into ‘Freestone’s Monster’, a book written by a woman named Bitter Truth in her universe. She didn’t think she had the time to find out what the author was named in this universe.

A singsong voice cut through the air, “I heard a literary reference!” It took all of Celestia’s willpower not to react as the usually appropriately dressed language arts teacher at her school emerged from the woods from behind Twilight. Cheerilee was wearing...it was probably easier to say what she wasn’t wearing. She wasn’t wearing a proper weather-appropriate coat. She wasn’t wearing actual pants. She was wearing what looked like bleach-white pseudo-fur boots with heels that could not be practical, a white furred bikini set that honestly only barely covered enough to be legal but certainly not decent, and a white puffy ski vest that had to come straight from the 1980’s. On her head was a tuque that matched the bikini set. For some ungodly reason she had a pair of AR-16’s strapped to her back and was wearing an ammo belt as a bandolier.

Fortunately for Celestia, the entire group boggled, so even her dropped jaw (which she couldn’t quite control due to her barely contained shock) didn’t really stand out. “Cheerilee...what in the world are you wearing?!” asked Luna.

The woman didn’t react to the shock being thrown her way, “Just a pair of military grade rifles. Cranky told me to borrow them, you know how he is, can’t ever set back and have a good time.” She rolled her eyes playfully, “You just know he’s gonna gloat at all of you for not taking him up on his offer.”

“Celestia’s golden standard, Miss Cheerilee!” exclaimed Sunset, “We’re not talking about the firearms, we’re talking about the…” she stammered out, waving in Cheerilee’s general direction.

Harshwhinny could be heard breathing heavily through her nose. “Miss Cheerilee, while I do understand that you have some form of...mental hang-up about wearing proper clothes while hunting, the level that you’ve taken this particular ensemble strains the bounds of credulity, if not good climate-aware safety measures.”

Cheerilee had at least some sense of chagrin for the outfit as she blushed. “Well, I mean, it’s what I wore to ski resorts back when I was in college, and I do still fit all my old outfits, so I figured, why not?”

“Well, then,” said Celestia with a tinge of hysteria to her voice, “Then let’s get to the source of the problem. Hopefully we can get this over with and get back to some eggnog.”

This was apparently the right thing to say, and Celestia was glad that she had guessed they were waiting on her. She did seem to be in some sort of leadership position, as the group hadn’t actually moved on...Wallflower’s(?) suggestion that they go to the cabin until Celestia had said to. She was also immensely glad that everyone else knew where this cabin was, because she was subtly following the group as she worked her hands to try and hold the rifle she now carried as though she had done so all her life like the women around her were.

Applejack spoke up as they moved, “Has anyone seen Pinkie? I aint seen her since we all split up when we left the cabin in the first place…”

As though in answer to her question, a loud and very cranky voice echoed over the snow. “I know you know how to use a pickaxe to fight, you trained under Ma and Pa just like we did, so why don’t you?”

Pinkie’s voice tumbled out in response, “Because a party cannon is more fun!”

As they walked, they saw a trio of girls, two with gray skin and the third with bright pink. The two with gray skin were carrying pickaxes stained black with the blood of the zombie-clones, where Pinkie didn’t seem to be carrying a weapon of any sort. They were far enough away that even though they could see one of the girls talking, they couldn’t hear what she said.

Pinkie turned to the quieter girl and patted her on the head, “Basic law of cartoon combat; large, unwieldy weapons will always be available just off-screen whenever it’s funny.”

The other gray skinned girl’s growl could be heard even with the distance separating them, “BUT WE’RE NOT IN A CARTOON!”

Applejack, Fluttershy, Twilight, and Sunset broke away from their group to run over to the trio of what Celestia now recognized as the Pie sisters. Well, minus one.

The girl with the orange puff of hair stepped up next to Celestia, “None of them seem to have noticed that Maud and Rarity haven’t shown up yet.”

Luna answered for Celestia, “That is a concern, Adagio, and it shows that you are progressing well in the lessons that Princess Twilight wants you to learn. Any idea where they might be?”

Adagio snorted, “Well, she may seem as hard and dull as the rock she carries in her pocket, but I suspect Maud has moves that poor Rarity was helpless against.” A lascivious grin crossed her face.

Harshwhinney frowned, “Did you have a flicker of your old Siren’s powers that let you sniff out lust or something? That girl was a challenge to read in high school, and she only got worse after she earned her doctorate. I have a hard time believing that a thousand-year-old sea monster from another universe would have any capability of reading human emotion on that girl.”

Adagio’s grin just gained a wicked gleam, “No, I just saw them making out in the pantry. Apparently Rarity believes she’s a ‘naughty girl’ and needs a ‘big, strong, stoic amazon’ like Maud to ‘punish her,’” With that, she cackled as a pinch of blush tinged Nagatha’s cheeks.

Luna frowned as the two groups merged as they moved, “Did you just make that up to get a rise out of us?”

The apparently millenia old girl snorted again, “Nope! That’s the best part, if you paid enough attention you could see the two flirting all week.”

Pinkie bounced between Luna and Celestia, “Oooh, oooh, are you talking about Maud and Rarity?! Isn’t it so cute? Maud always did have an eye for the shiniest rocks in the ground, and she found a diamond in Rarity, amirite?!”

Adagio just groaned and rolled her eyes, casually pulling a dagger from her hair and flinging it. A clone of Fluttershy fell to the ground from behind a tree it had apparently been hiding behind, serving as an excellent reminder that, though they were still literally in the woods, they weren’t out of danger. Weapons were brought to a more ready position all around as Adagio sauntered over to the rapidly decaying corpse and yanked her dagger free. “Pink, you could drain the life out of a party faster than a starving changeling at a Vegas wedding.”

Nurse Redheart’s forehead creased in confusion, “Wait, I thought she was dating that one guy she met at a convention, what was his name?”

Pinkie sighed, “Mudbriar, and apparently he was caught ‘in fragrant delicate’ by one of Maud’s old classmates and hasn’t shown his face since.”

A voice that spoke with practiced refinement interrupted as Rarity and Maud came from a tightly grown knoll in the woods they were passing, Rarity tucked protectively under one of Maud’s arms as the older, larger girl heaved a truly impressive pickaxe over her shoulder as though it were made of balsa, “The phrase is ‘in flagrante delicto,’ Pinkie darling, and you know it’s a sore subject for you sister.”

Pinkie looked over to the couple and gasped, “Oh, no! I’m so sorry Maud, I didn’t realize I was speaking so casually of your broken heart! Please forgive me, I hate seeing you so emotional in public!”

Maud blinked her eyes, her expression unchanged. “It’s okay Pinkie,” she replied, “One learns to live with the heartbreak.”

Celestia had seen a version of Maud in her home universe; she still wondered if the girl needed medication.

Rarity disentangled herself from her (apparent) lover and stepped closer to Sunset and Twilight. “You two should know,” she said in a somewhat hushed tone, “That your somewhat disturbing magically charged clone seems to be nearly identical to what you looked like during the Friendship Games in our final year of high school.” At Twilight’s frown, Rarity patted her arm, “I don’t believe she’s nearly as powerful, darling, but if she’s even a little bit as capable as you’ve proven, the fact that she’s ‘powered up,’ as it were, may require we modify whatever tactics you’ve used in the past against her.”

“Wait,” interjected Sunset, “How did you know what she looks like right now? The only reason we have any clue is because Wallflower managed to scout for us.”

At this Rarity blushed, “Well, as it happens, it just so happened, that is, I mean, well...a lady does like some privacy, even when her partner does get a bit excited at doing things...that is to say, well, I mean, Adagio wasn’t actually wrong about where we were...we stayed away from the opened food! Canned goods are uncomfortable when one has a bare back but are perfectly usable as a surface when covered in appropriately thick winter coats…” Rarity’s blush now made her face look as red as Sunset’s hair, “That is to say…” she was cut off as a gray hand settled onto her shoulder.

Pinkie giggled furiously, “Oh, my, gosh! I’ve never seen Maud so embarrassed!”

Celestia looked from Pinkie to the perfectly still and controlled face of Maud and wondered how Pinkie could tell anything of what her sister was thinking.

“We happened to be in the pantry when the strange copy of Twilight Sparkle started creating her clone army,” Maud supplied, “We stayed there until she had sent out enough clones to hunt down you all before we opted to make a break for it and join you.”

Rarity allowed her face to cool a moment more before she said, “Indeed, and it was quite good fortune that Maud had her pickaxe with her, I had wondered why she brought it along, but she said she thought it might come in handy…”

Pinkie nodded sagely, “Yup! It runs in the family, I mean, for me it’s my Pinkie Sense, but…”

One of Pinkie’s other sisters, Limestone if Celestia recalled correctly, interrupted, “Pinkie, we’ve talked about this! Hunters don’t actually have a sixth sense and neither do you! You just decided your itchy ears or wiggly nose or whatever meant something and started calling it Hunter Sense until you realized you didn’t have the stomach for the family business!”

The fourth Pie sister just let out a quiet, “Hmmmm!” This seemed to stop whatever reply Pinkie was about to make.

“Marble is right,” said Maud, “This isn’t the time to discuss family business.” So saying, she pointed.

They had reached the edge of the woods to find a clearing, probably three football fields large, with a cabin in the middle of it with several vehicles parked at the head of a nearby access path that, presumably, led to a road back to civilization. What would be a picturesque scene was marred by a horde of figures, all falling into five basic body types...or at least they thought it was five at first. While they saw the expected multiple copies of Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie, they also now saw clones of Sunset Shimmer, Adagio, Limestone, Marble, and Amber. There was no clone of anyone over college age (or college-age appearing, in Adagio’s case), and curiously also no Wallflower. That there were no Twilight Sparkles in the mix actually made sense, given the cackling form of the dark mirror version of Twilight that was hovering above the hoard. The mass of clones was silent, eerily so. Were it not for the occasional breath that seemed to happen automatically, the entire group was standing stock still, having turned only enough to face the group and simply stare.

“Whoah, now that’s creepy…” uttered Cheerilee.

Luna spoke up as well, “Rarity, Maud, I thought you said you made a break for it after she had sent enough out…”

Rarity looked even paler than usual, “We did, she only had a handful when we snuck out…”

Twilight, the one with their group, slapped her palm to her face, “Of course! She’s got a threshold of how many she can control, but when we were killing off the ones she sent after us, she could just make more, and with all the genetic material she could want in the cabin in the form of our hair and toothbrushes…”

A malevolent voice shouted from above the hoard, “Don’t forget other body fluids that I found in the pantry, Sparkle!” An amused cackle rippled from the overpowered clone’s throat, “You two aren’t nearly as discrete as you think you are! I just took a quick stop in the pantry after you, heh…’snuck’ away!”

The group collectively scanned the hoard of clones, then back to a furiously blushing Rarity standing next to Maud.

Rarity opted to speak for the pair, “Well, aaaah, Maud likes to...take her time. She tends to my needs before her own and the situation escalated rather rapidly before we could get around to tending hers…and it worked out in the end, right? Maud simply took out her...frustration on the zombie clones that were after us all quite well!” she finally stopped when Maud, to the relief of more than just Rarity, put a gentle finger to the white-skinned girl’s lips. Rarity sputtered out with an embarrassed giggle.

Redheart spoke up, next, “Yeah, but why only you girls? Why not me, Luna, or even Celestia?”

Twilight spoke up then, “Well, it’s probably down to the viability of the genetic material based on age. The older the body the DNA is harvested from, the more likely it is to break down before it can be used for her method.”

The darker Twilight hovered closer to the group without leaving the perimeter set up by her hoard. “Right on both counts germ donor,” she cackled, “I’ve already ensured one of your motley crew is out of the way, and when I wipe out the rest it will completely cripple the hunters for the entire coastline! Having not just one team of hunters gathered, but the bulk of four teams?! What were you all thinking? You just handed yourselves to a supervillain like me on a silver platter!”

Twilight Sparkle was nearly apoplectic, “Only because you made your villain’s lair at mom’s writing cabin! And if I’m your ‘germ donor,’ that makes...you...just...a bunch of germs!”

Adagio rolled her eyes while Sunset slapped her own palm to her forehead, “Twi...just stop trying to trash talk.”

The flying Sparkle roared with laughter, “I can’t believe I’m spawned from you! And Chrysalis just wouldn’t shut up about how much you made her life miserable! On the other hand, I guess she was really talking about your pony counterpart, the one who could actually get life right well enough to become a princess.”

It took Redheart’s, Wallflower’s, Sunset’s and Ember’s united efforts to hold Twilight back from charging blindly at her clone counterpart.

“Please,” spoke Celestia above the fracas, “I don’t know what happened that you’re so intent on killing us all, but surely there doesn’t need to be any more loss of life. Perhaps if we all put down our weapons…” she glanced over the unmoving mass of bodies staring at them, “...and maybe dispelled your clones, then we could talk this out into some form of agreement?”

Luna grabbed Celestia’s elbow and hissed into her sister’s ear, “What are you doing? We don’t negotiate with world-ending eldritch abominations, we end them!”

Celestia said nothing out loud, just looked Luna firmly in the eyes, flickered them over to where Sunset was getting Twilight to calm down, then back to Luna.

“...fine, but I’m keeping my guns handy, I refuse to trust her.” Luna conceded.

Celestia rolled her eyes and turned back to their apparent foe, “Well? Can we be civil about this?”

Dark Twilight rather blatantly made an act of thinking on Celestia’s words. “Gee, how about we go with, ‘NO!’” So saying, she turned her open palm to Celestia, a ball of purple light growing from pinpoint to golf-ball size in a heartbeat before launching through the air in her direction. With Applejack tackling Celestia out of the path of the energy ball, the detente was broken and weapons fire cut through the air, along with the shuffling, then running of the hoard of clones.

Just as Celestia and Applejack were drawing their weapons up to aim for the charging line of clones, more thunderous fire could be heard, and the entire flank of clones seemed to fall over sideways. All combatants who had their own agency turned to the sound, the clone army slowing to a stop, to see about twenty people wearing winter combat gear and welding M4 carbine rifles.

The winged Twilight howled, this time in rage, and began using magic to spawn more clones as the section of troops pushed forward in a disciplined row, save one who broke from the rest of the team and bounded over to their group. Ripping off her helmet, snow goggles, and balaclava, Rainbow Dash beamed at the group, “I told you all I saw a military base over that ridge! They don’t teach us how to recognize our own bases at the Academy for nothing...”

“Rainbow!” came the united exclamation from the girls, a group-hug preempted when Fluttershy dove at her childhood friend and promptly kissed her firmly on the lips.

An obviously startled Rainbow Dash did everything she could to steady the pair of them, carefully aiming the rifle at the snow and holding Fluttershy around the waist. The kiss lasted a long while, but eventually a blushing Fluttershy stepped away from Rainbow Dash, grinning somewhat stupidly and unable to raise her gaze to meet anyone’s eyes.

Sunset blinked and spoke in a surprised tone of voice for the group, “Wow…Rainbow, I didn’t know you two were like that…”

Dash looked about like she’d been punched in the face with a fist made of happiness and fun, “...uh...I didn’t either...but I guess we are...now?”

Fluttershy bleated happily and covered her face with her hands.

As another of the soldiers made their way over to the group, Rainbow shook her head to clear it and began gushing, “So guess who’s now officially a member of the super-secret Air Force Special Team 13!” her smile was so large it threatened to split her face.

“Oh, Rainbow, I’m so happy for you!” squeaked Fluttershy, finally able to pull her hands down.

The other soldier finally joined Rainbow, pulling off his goggles and tugging down his balaclava to reveal a chiseled and somewhat weather-worn face of a man about Harshwhinney’s age, “A team that won’t stay secret if you blab about it to everyone you meet, rookie!”

Dash waved away his concern, “Nah, colonel, they’re cool. That kaiju incursion you mentioned in the briefing?” at his nod, she continued, “These guys took care of it. Well, most of ‘em, anyway.”

This earned the group an appreciative once-over, and his eyes lingered a bit longer on Harshwhinny than the rest. “Say, didn’t I see you in a magazine a while back? I think you’re also in some of our classified files from back in the day.” he said with appreciation in his voice.

For the first time that Celestia could remember, Nagatha actually blushed and smiled a bit, “Well, yes, but perhaps we could discuss this later over a...debriefing?”

Adagio watched with an open smirk, Cheerilee huffed in frustration and started to cross her arms in a huff before remembering she was holding a rifle, Wallflower was just barely repressing a giggle, and the rest of the girls were boggling that Miss Harshwhinney seemed to be flirting with the Air Force colonel. He reached out his hand to shake Nagatha’s, “Colonel Wind Rider, at your service. Are you leading this band of rogues?”

Holding the handshake longer than was proper, Harshwhinney replied, “Oh, no, but I do my best to keep them on track. For our fearless leader, you’ll have to look to Celestia there.” She nodded her head to the principal, but Wind Rider didn’t turn his head to follow.

The crack of a side-by-side shotgun going off interrupted the tableau, “Not to spoil this moment, but we kinda got a situation on our hands here!” Applejack belted.

That served nicely to remind them that there was a battle for the fate of the world at hand, so the band of Hunters and the platoon of soldiers went about doing what they did best.

Twenty minutes later, however, it was proving that they weren’t making much difference other than keeping the flying Twilight Sparkle busy. “I have an ENDLESS WELL of magic at my beck and call! I can revive myself and my clones without tiring!” A few cracks of rifles led to the sound of an equal number of bullets fizzling harmlessly against a spherical purple shield trying to interrupt the tirade, “AND I CAN KEEP THE SHIELD UP FOR LONGER THAN YOU HAVE BULLETS AS WELL!”

Celestia sighed as she inspected the final magazine of her carbine before slamming it into place, “She’s right, this isn't working. We need some sort of plan…”

“Already on it,” Twilight Sparkle, the landbound one, replied smuggly while closing a flip-style cell phone.

Celestia, Luna, and Sunset, who had managed to remain in a group throughout the battle, turned to the bespectacled young woman. “How do you mean?” replied Sunset.

Before Twilight could answer directly, a SUV tore up the snowy drive and skidded to a stop next to the other vehicles. They watched the passenger side door pop open and a woman of medium height jumped out and crunched her snow boots through the snow with clear determination. Pulling her scarf down and her sunglasses off, the group saw the pale face of a woman who had clearly had just about enough and was about to put her foot down.

“TWILIGHT ELIZABETH SPARKLE!” roared from the woman’s mouth.

Luna and Celestia looked at each other and mouthed, ‘Elizabeth?’ with incredulous expressions on their faces.

The authoritative “mom” tone was enough to completely halt all activity in the clearing. The clones suddenly dispersed to component chemicals with a splash (getting some fluids of indeterminate origin on Adagio’s pants and boots, being the only combatant that had melee weapons that had to be used up-close) and the winged Twilight fell to the ground with an ungraceful thump. It spoke volumes, rather more than the woman’s earlier yell, that nobody took the opportunity to fire at the suddenly shieldless magical girl.

“M...Mom!” stammered the eldritch abomination.

The woman began shouting as she stomped over to her artificially created and magically powered up daughter, “What is this I hear about you trying to form an army to take over the world? I thought we had ‘the talk’ about world domination plans when you were nine!” Without preamble, Twilight Velvet grabbed the ear of the clone Twilight between a thumb and forefinger, pinching rather hard enough for the entire assembly of sentient beings to cringe.

“Ow! But I’m not your daughter, I’m a clone of your daughter, you’re not my mother!” the content of the words was belied by the somewhat petulant whine they were delivered in.

“I may not have gone into labor for you specifically, but I taught you better than to assume that meant you weren’t part of this family!” she began marching the winged girl back to the SUV, where the driver's side door opened to reveal Twilight’s father, who had a fairly long-suffering grin on his face.

“Hey, pumpkin,” said Night Light at the Twilight Sparkle next to Celestia, Luna, and Sunset, “How’s your Christmas vacation with your friends going?”

Twilight smuggly shrugged at her father’s question while throwing a triumphant grin at her clone as Velvet dragged her by, “It’s going alright. Ups and downs, but overall it’s nice to spend time with them. Can’t wait until I get to spend New Years with the family, though.”

The clone Twilight sputtered indignantly, “This is ridiculous, I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“Twilight,” began Velvet sternly, “No, we can’t call you both Twilight…”

Trying to regain some semblance of the command she had earlier held over the situation, the clone growled, “You’re right, I’m not Twilight, you may call me MIDNIGHT SPARKLE!”

Sunset and her crew looked unimpressed, Harshwhinny, Cheerilee, and Redheart rolled their eyes, and the soldiers were unreadable in their protective gear. Twilight Velvet sputtered a laugh, “The name you insisted we call you during your goth phase?!”

And instantly, the clone went from intimidating world ending threat to angsty young woman who was emotionally stuck as a teenager, “IT’S NOT A PHASE, MOM!” whined Midnight.

Several hours later, things had calmed down significantly. The soldiers had hung around long enough to debrief the entire group, Midnight Sparkle had been made to power down and Twilight (with her mother’s permission) disassembled the cabin’s satellite receiver and television to cobble together a magic suppressing headband while Midnight was grounded “until she was old enough to graduate college again!” Rainbow was permitted by her new commanding officer to finish off her holiday leave with her friends, and the three groups of hunters and the Elements all gathered around the cabin’s fireplace indoors and the fire pit outdoors until the sun started sinking behind the horizon. Soon enough, Celestia and Sunset were the only ones left by the fire pit outside.

They sat in companionable silence, Sunset leaning familially against her adopted mother while the fire slowly died. “Well, that was a thing that happened,” she quipped.

Celestia, by now rather inured to the operation of this universe and ready for the leap out or bed, whichever came first, smiled down at this version of the girl she could now admit she was starting to think of like a daughter. “Do you wish you had a more traditional Christmas?” she said, using the name for the holiday she’d heard the locals use thus far. Still seems like an odd name for the winter solstice… she thought.

Sunset snorted in amusement. “For us? This is traditional. Certainly better than our first Christmas as a family. I still wake up from nightmares that feature Sombra’s ‘decking the halls’ with blood at the mall,” the girl shuddered, “But tonight? No, everyone lived, even the bad guy, and Twilight’s family even grew a little bit.” Celestia watched Sunset’s smile grow, “No, we don’t get the Christmas tree or the big turkey dinner or the family arguments around the eggnog. We get undead and aliens and interdimensional threats...but I’m with you and auntie Luna, and that is what Christmas should be about.”

Celestia let the rather profound statement hang in the air for a few moments, “That and a sufficient supply of ammo.”

When Sunset’s laughter exploded from her, Celestia watched a door of light slide open on the other side of the fire that Sunset couldn’t see. She rolled her eyes as Alice stepped through the door and waved casually at the pair. “Sunset, why don’t you go check on your friends, I’ll come join you in a little bit after I put out the fire.”

With the remnants of a laugh, Sunset said, “Okay, mom. See you in a few.”

As the young woman went into the cabin, Celestia grabbed a bucket that had been used to haul firewood from the stack at the back of the cabin and walked a short distance to where some snow had somehow remained undisturbed during the battle. Alice followed behind her, “Soooo…” said the ephemeral woman, “How’d it go?”

Bending down to scoop a healthy bucketful of snow, Celestia sighed, almost absently adjusting the carbine on it’s strap so it didn’t dangle down into the snow but was positioned between her shoulder blades, “Did you really just get here, or were you watching the whole time?”

Alice at least permitted herself to look contrite, “Well, not the whole time, but hey, you were doing just fine without me stepping in!”

Celestia walked back to the fire and dumped the snow on it, making sure it covered all the burning logs completely, watching it melt to water nearly instantly until the logs were cool enough to stop burning. “Some idea that I was part of a team of vigilante paranormal investigators with paramilitary experience would have been helpful at some point.”

Alice made a ‘psht’ing noise and waved dismissively at Celestia. “Like I could have told you anything you didn’t pick up from the clues around you. It’s not like they were trying to hide anything from you.”

Celestia dropped the bucket next to the doused fire and glared at Alice, “And you didn’t think I was out of my depth here?! I’ve never been in a firefight before! Breaking up a few fist fights in a school hallway doesn’t qualify me for defusing a supervillain threat! An alien from another world was threatening to take over the world right under my nose for three years and it took another alien to even begin to address the problem! You put...me in charge of a group of people who regularly save the world...what if I’d royally screwed up?”

Alice, instead of looking contrite as Celestia expected, merely smiled consolingly, “Oh, Celestia, if only you could see in yourself what you see in others so readily...even other versions of yourself.” She waved in the direction of the cabin, “Don’t you think the Celestia they all thought you were would have been ready to face this challenge?”

Celestia hooked a thumb through the strap over her torso and bumped the carbine with her elbow to illustrate, “Well, obviously!”

Alice waved around her demonstrably, “This Celestia has nothing you don’t have now, and even less than you’ll have in a few years. You already have the support and cooperation of the Equestrian princesses, it took this Celestia nearly a year to get that. You have no more magic than this Celestia has, and...well, there’s more to this Celestia’s story than I have time to tell, but the point is that you and she are nearly identical in temperament and personality...and qualifications to handle things like threats to those you love and care about. Sure, there’s a few obvious differences,” she pointed with her tablet device at the gun on Celestia’s back, “But they’re cosmetic. In the end, when it came to this Christmas...or Hearth’s Warming, what was it that really mattered to Sunset?”

Celestia thought back to the conversation she had with the young woman by the fire not even ten minutes prior, “She wanted to be with me...but why? What is it about being with me that made such a difference for her?”

A squawk from the device in her hands prompted a grin from Alice, “That is what your next leap is going to show you.” She stabbed at the tablet with a flourish, “Bango!”

Light exploded into Celestia’s vision, taking this familiar but violent world from her sight.

Normally (inasmuch as the events of the last subjective several days could be considered “normal”) Celestia entered a world where her counterpart was standing or sitting, perfectly still or nearly so. This time, she felt the distinct movement of some sort of rocking beneath her backside as her legs were straddling something that was moving her forward. As her vision cleared up, she realized she was on a horse, it’s reins in her hands and a fairly nice saddle and tack on said equine. She was concerned for a moment that the horse might be Sunset, but then she heard a second set of hoofsteps to her left and turned to see the very recognizable red-and-yellow striped hair on a face that, while in the spectrum of tan, still held the physical features she associated with the universe-hopping pony-girl.

Up ahead, she saw another horse bearing a figure that had hair that she had seen on some of the more magically inclined versions of her sister, the night-colored hair being completely replaced with a starfield seemingly affixed to Luna’s head. As if to confirm her suspicions, the figure turned, Luna’s familiar face in the unfamiliar light tan color that this world’s inhabitants seemed to all share but framed by the magical starfield hair, pointed ears on either side of her head, and a simple crown made of dark metal and a single point above a star shaped gem.

“Sister,” the other woman called back to her, voice tinged with happiness, “I recognize this place, it hasn’t changed nearly at all in the 1,000 years since I was here last!”

A voice flitted through her awareness, one that sounded like her, That would be because I did my best to keep it the same.

Mentally, she gave a bit of a squawk and had to focus on not ejecting herself from the horse’s saddle. What the…? she thought to herself.

A mental giggle floated through her thoughts, You can’t have expected a bit of pup-magic would be able to put a millennia-old aasimar to sleep, did you? When I felt the magic coming, I...negotiated with it. I have had precious little unexpected in my last several centuries, I thought I’d let this play out a bit before shutting it down.

The now expected door of light manifested on a nearby rock outcropping that was covered in snow. Alice stomped out, and like before her sneaker-clad feet didn’t disturb so much as a flake of snow. “Hey! Don’t be calling my magic ‘pup-magic,’ I’ll have you know I can bend timelines to my will!” she shouted at Celestia.

Celestia, for her part, was doing her best to keep any hint of the exchange from being noticed by her two travelling companions. She gave Luna a happy smile and nodded reassuringly. This seemed to be good enough for the other woman, who returned her eyes to the path before them.

My dear, responded the voice in her head, the one of this version of Celestia apparently, I have faced down gods and demons. I have weathered the storms of chaos and helped birth worlds inside new cosmos. Your use of this magic is creative, but rote.

“Listen, you old nag…” began the elf as the horse passed by the outcrop she was standing on. Celestia confirmed Sunset wasn’t paying attention and turned a glare at Alice before returning her gaze to the path like her sister.

Okay, so before we go too much further, you need to know my being here… she began.

...was not your doing, I understand. Just as you are able to peruse my memories as you’re sharing my body, so too am I able to view yours. While you may not be able to rifle through the multiple millennia of mine, your few decades were but a light Rest Day reading. Not that you haven’t had your triumphs, my young friend, the voice interrupted itself hastily, It’s simply so short in comparison to my own journals. What I do find interesting is these other memories that seem to be present, those of other Celestia’s...including a vampire lord, how fascinating! The voice was silent for a while, a fact for which Celestia was grateful. She wanted to have some time with her own thoughts before she had to interact more than conversationally with the people of this world.

There was the idle thought the Celestia of this world had mentioned; she still had the memories of those other Celestias in her head somehow? How was she not going mad from conflicting life stories?

Leaving that for the time being, she returned her thoughts to the girl beside her. Was she a transplant from another universe, like her own Sunset was?

Indeed she is, came the alien thought. Celestia nearly jumped out of her saddle again at the surprise intrusion. An ethereal chuckle graced her thoughts as the consciousness she was sharing a head with enjoyed her reaction. Sunset came to me via a curious mirror that fell into my possession some centuries back. It’s creator is unknown, but we...my scholars and I, that is, could tell that it used magic that could manipulate time and space, but the magics were so heavily intrinsic to it’s construction that we decided it would be fruitless to tinker with. Then it activated itself about 29 moons ago and out came Sunset...in fact, let’s see if I can simply show you…

Celestia was suddenly looking down at a desk and unable to control her body. She watched her hands holding a document and a quill and her focus scanned text that she didn’t have the ability to read, at least not natively.

~Oh, let me amend that oversight!~

Suddenly, Celestia was able to read the text. It wasn’t that it morphed into her native language’s written script, it was that the native understanding of it was suddenly added to her unconscious language abilities. With the realization that she was reading elvish script, she recognized that the document was about some tax law that even an educator like Principal Celestia could recognize as ill-conceived. Her hand with the quill scratched a long black mark through the text and made some notes to the author in the margins. “Blueblood,” it read, “I will not permit you to separate my people’s wealth from them to fund a new pleasure yacht for your indulgence. Try this again and I will see what my courts can do to prosecute you for crimes against the people. Sincerely, your aunt Queen Celestia.”

As she watched her hand finish the signature, a knock came from the door. “Come,” she heard herself say.

The door opened with the silence of a palace that was well kept by expert staff. The view looked up to see her captain of the guard, Shining Armor. Huh, thought Celestia, Cadance’s boyfriend looks pretty good in full plate...I’ll have to tease my niece about that when I finally return home, she thought.

~Oh, I had almost missed that in your memories, you have a niece named Cadance who is courting...a federal agent Shining Armor? How interesting…~

Celestia tried to tune out the commentary from her host as Shining spoke, “Your highness, the guards in the dangerous artifact storage are reporting a disturbance with one of the larger vaults.”

Celestia dropped the parchment and quill on the desk, “Lead the way,” she said.

Minutes later, they were at the entrance of the vaults in full armor. Shining had stopped along the way to don his and then ran to catch up to her, she simply willed hers onto her body from it’s storage medallion on her neck and it flowed like water over her form. She drew her blade, a long sword that was light enough to hold single handed so she could also summon her disk shield bearing her sigil if needed. That same sigil was stamped into the pommel of her blade, along with the elven glyph for ‘peace.’ Nodding at the guards at the entrances of the vaults, “Open the door,” she commanded.

As they did, she could feel with some sense she didn’t have a name for the magical tide coming from the mirror. Using that to guide her to the artefact’s vault, she set the course, her guard falling in behind her. Moments later, they were also undoing the rather comprehensive combination locks on the vault, until finally she gave a nod to the guard with their hands at the ready. The guard, including Shining Armor, formed to do a breaching entry. “Go,” was all the command she needed to give when the door was yanked open as fast as the two humans and the dwarf doing the pulling could.

Curiously, there was a red haired girl laying on the floor. She looked up with large, glistening eyes. “Oh, thank goodness, I fell through this portal and don’t know what happened to my body…” she trailed off as she saw the blade leveled at her.

“Do not move,” Celestia heard herself say, “I have been double-crossed by far too many creatures that have masqueraded as defenceless girls to take you at face value.”

Armor boots that were made for intimidation in combat stomped across the floor, sword tip unwavering from it’s target at the girl’s neck. Celestia’s hand reached down and the gauntlet automatically retracted at it’s owner’s mental command. Pads of fingers brushed the girl’s forehead until planting a thumb between the girl’s eyes. Celestia chanted a spell in high-elvish and the girl’s eyes glowed white.

Images flashed by, ones very familiar to the visiting Celestia, though showing much more detail than what she had previously been privy to. She saw the same little pony growing up from a young, talented, and ambitious filly to a star pupil under Princess Celestia’s tutelage. She saw Sunset’s perspective on the final arguments between the princess and student, then saw the frantic plan thrown together on the fly to leave Equestria through the mirror, use whatever she found on the other side of the portal over the course of 30 moons to grow her power into the alicorn princess she was shown by the mirror she could become, then return to Equestria in triumph.

No matter what it took. She swore it even as she fell to her face with the unfamiliar limbs and strange clothing that manifested on her body.

The vision suddenly ended and Celestia found herself tutting at the girl, “Sunset Shimmer of the Unicorn Tribe, eh? Your teacher didn’t teach you not to meddle with magical artifacts that are beyond your ken.”

The shellshocked girl gasped and a bit of a rebellious glint sparked in her eyes that the universe-leaping Celestia clearly recognized, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m the finest student of my generation…”

Celestia flicked a wrist, and Sunset was slammed against the wall without being touched.

“You are but an apprentice whose ambition outstripped her tallent. A student that thought herself better than her teacher. There’s but a seed there, one that can grow if given fertile soil. Don’t seek to lie to me, young one, I saw all your teacher sought to show you, heard all the words of wisdom she poured onto that seed to make it grow. Your soil is poisoned by your pride.”

As Celestia spoke, the magic coming from the mirror suddenly stilled. She stepped over to it, ignoring the pained groans of Sunset coming from the other side of the room, and reached out with her magical senses. A touch to the mirror’s surface confirmed it, the portal had closed. She knew from Sunset’s memories that the girl had waited until the last possible moment to pass through so her mentor couldn’t send anyone through after her to bring her back. She intended this to be a long-term trip.

Shaking her head, she turned and regarded the girl, who was now watching her like a prey animal...though Celestia supposed that was technically correct given her birth form was that of a pony. “Captain,” she began, “Have the physicians check her form. Transmutation can be finicky, after all. Make sure it’s a stable change and that she’s healthy. Replace her clothing with something from the castle stores and confiscate her belongings for inspection by me at a later date. Once that’s done, bring her to my chambers. I feel I may have to take her on as an apprentice if I’m going to deliver her alive to my counterpart in her world.”

It spoke volumes of Shining Armor’s loyalty that he didn’t question a single word his queen said as he obeyed immediately.

And then Celestia was in the saddle of her counterpart’s horse, riding next to Sunset and behind her counterpart’s sister on the trail to a winter keep.

Celestia’s thoughts reeled as she realized that literally no time passed while she was being shown that memory. Never do that again! she mentally snapped.

How does the saying go, came the reply, ‘If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen?’ You’re in MY body, young one. You may be, to use one of your world’s analogies, ‘in the driver’s seat,’ but you’re not the one that must suffer when the paint job is scratched.

Celestia scoffed, Yeah, well, rule number one of letting someone else drive your vehicle is DON’T DISTRACT THE DRIVER!

“Yeah, yah old nag!” snapped Alice from up ahead, who had enlisted whatever magic she was using to get ahead of the group without using any sort of teleportation that she could sense. And she realized that she could sense all sorts of magic. A sort of hyper-awareness was operating in the background of her subconscious at all times, keeping her so well aware of her surroundings that she could practically feel the insects burrowing through the veins and channels of the trees in the forest. To extend the automobile metaphor, it was like having a 360 degree HUD with complete active readouts of the entire state of the car, artificially intelligent path prediction for the surrounding vehicles, and three different GPS systems announcing her location in real-time.

Before she could get overwhelmed, the excess of senses suddenly stopped. She was back to her usual perceptions of the world and realized that Sunset was looking at her with concern. Schooling her features, she turned to her student, “Yes, Sunset? What’s wrong?”

The girl just grew confused, “I was actually about to ask you the same question. You seemed to...well, back in Equestria we’d have called it an anxiety attack.”

A touch of pink reached her cheeks, “Oh, just a bit of melancholy, my dear. I’m happy my sister has been returned to me, I’m happy my student is with me...it’s just the price to get here was very, very high.”

This was all strictly true. Had she received this question from her own Sunset, other than some of the...flowery forms of speech, the Queen and she at least could agree on that.

Sunset, rather than looking appeased or pleased at this, simply grew pensive. “What seems to be the problem, my student?”

The girl sighed, “Well...I mean, I guess it’s really not important, but it’s been nearly thirty moons since I came here from Equestria…and…” she trailed off, seemingly unable to continue.

Celestia slowed her mount a touch, trusting Sunset to do the same. They opened the distance between them and Luna by a stone’s throw before they returned to their previous pace, “Sunset,” Celestia said in what she hoped was a comforting tone, “Your feelings are valid, no matter how important you think they rate against the struggles and challenges I must deal with. I will listen, surely you know this by now, right?”

Sunset turned to Celestia with a slight glisten in her eyes. “Well, you know I grew up as an orphan, right?”

A quick thought-conference with her counterpart confirmed this, “Yes, it has come up.”

“And you know how Princess Celestia brought me in as her student, right?”

At this Principal Celestia’s smile became strained, a sentiment that Queen Celestia apparently shared, The fake elf calls me ‘nag,’ but nay, the obstreperousness and capacity for truly divine error belongs to that winged horse! So many ways, so many times this child practically begged for the attention of a mother, and yet she would only give the girl the time granted a ruler to a subject.

Celestia reached over and squeezed Sunset’s shoulder comfortingly before returning her hand to her reins, “I believe she may have seen you as more than that, but yes.”

This was apparently the right thing to say to bring Sunset’s true feelings out, as much as it hurt the older women to see the girl in emotional turmoil. “Well, she never showed it! You saw my memories when I first got here, you know how little she did to make me feel…” she swallowed back a sob, “Make me feel like a member of her family. When Cadence showed up…”

Celestia sighed, “Yes, I can see why that would have been the final ‘nail in the coffin,’ as it were.”

Sunset raised an eyebrow at the anachronistic turn of phrase with an upward tilt of her mouth before resuming her emotional disquisition, “She was basically everything I thought Celestia wanted in a daughter, everything I was trying to become, but she didn’t rate any higher a place in Celestia’s family than niece…” a tear trickled down the girl’s cheek, “And that’s when...that’s when I think I realized; I don’t think I thought it consciously, but I realized that she would never, ever accept me as a daughter, that’s she’d never want to be my mom.” With that tears really started to flow.

Celestia pulled her lips back and issued a short, two-toned whistle. Her sister turned to look as intended, and Celestia held out her gloved hand, palm out in the signal horse-mounted riders used to communicate ‘hold,’ then twisted down her pinkie and ring finger and tapped the air twice to relay that they needed fifteen minutes, to which Luna responded with a raised fist and the same double-tone whistle in reply, then turned her horse to find a path that would allow her to circle Celestia and Sunset in a perimeter roughly as wide across as twice their distance, as per standard procedure when riding the wilds between cities. The knowledge was practically instinctual thanks to Queen Celestia providing some assistance via her subconscious. She pulled the reins to stop her horse and Sunset did the same, almost unconsciously. Celestia guided her mount closer to Sunset’s and embraced the girl, holding her tightly as sobs wracked her body hard enough that she may have slid off her horse if not being held.

When she was able to control her sobbing, Sunset continued from the crook of Celestia’s neck and shoulder, “When you invited me to come with you with your sister, and she joked about being ‘Aunt Luna,’ I nearly cried. She didn’t know how much it meant to hear that…” another jag of sobs wracked the girls body before she was able to speak again, “...to have a family, even if it was just going to be for a week, just a little while. It’s torture, because I know it’s going to end, and I have to be so careful because I want to call you ‘mom’ so badly but I can’t because you’re going to send me away in less than a month and the closer it gets to the portal opening the less and less I want to go…”

Queen Celestia was astonishingly quiet, and when Principal Celestia let herself examine the feelings roiling in her head...she realized that the queen had grown just as close to Sunset as the former unicorn was to the queen. And in a disquieting epiphany, she realized that her own feelings for her own Sunset were nearly mirroring those of the queen’s...and she realized that she had probably been the last person to see it.

Shaking her head and smiling down at Sunset, she let a slight chuckle out. The girl pulled back a bit, clearly confused at the mirth while she was having an existential crisis, and Celestia let the emotions roiling in Queen Celestia’s heart reach her eyes. “Sunset, my dear sweet Sunset. If you had only known…”

No! No, you don’t...I forbid you to speak of…! Whatever Queen Celestia was about to say was interrupted by a computer-generated ‘SQUAAAK!!’ She glanced beyond Sunset to where she could see Alice had positioned herself, the humanoid reindeer now having a smug expression on her face as she held her tablet up in a triumphant pose, “CALL THAT PUP-MAGIC, YAH OLD HAG!” she sneered in Celestia’s direction. To Celestia herself, she nodded, “That’ll keep her busy. Make Sunset happy, and make sure the ol’ martyr there is happy in spite of her best efforts to remain otherwise!”

Celestia let even more amusement bleed into her grin as she fully focused on Sunset Shimmer, “If only you knew what was in my heart this last season. I have found myself wanting to bring you closer, bring you into my family. I feel...I feel as though you just fit. As though you were the…” she sought a suitable metaphor, then chuckled when she stumbled on a memory of Sunset’s discovery of one of the differences between Equestria and this world, “As though you were the cho-co-layt sauce to my vanilla icing cream.” she said, using the mispronunciation that Queen Celestia often tripped over. Hell, it was cute and funny, so why not?

This finally brought about a giggle in Sunset as happiness started creeping into the girl’s visage, but Celestia wasn’t finished. “I think your aunt over there,” she nodded to where Luna was continuing her patrol, “Saw it, she wouldn’t stop needling me about training you in the family sword style.” Sunset’s eyes were practically glowing with hope. I’m about to do something you should have already done, ‘your highness,’ and yes, I’m aware of the hypocrisy! she chastised within her own head, Don’t you dare go breaking her heart when I’m gone! “Let’s go to the keep and enjoy the solstice as a family, and when we return to Canterlot we can have Raven get to work on the formal adoption process...my princess!”

Laughter and sobs ripped out of Sunset’s throat as she pretty much leaped from the saddle and into Celestia’s arms. A startled Luna whipped her horse around and started toward them, only to see the odd tableau of Sunset practically dangling from Celestia’s arms over the snow, broad smiles on both of their faces. She immediately spurred her horse to go faster, and moments later pulled it to a stop, leaping off and pulling Sunset off Celestia, handling the girl like she was a ragdoll. Goodness! thought Celestia, These two rulers are strong! She hadn’t realized that she had been entirely supporting Sunset’s weight, holding her off the ground, until Luna had pulled her away.

Now holding Sunset so they were face to face, Luna’s own smile almost made her words slur as she boomed in the Royal Canterlot Voice, “DIDS’T MINE SISTER ACTUALLY ADMIT HER FEELINGS T’WARD THEE?!” Rather than reply verbally, Sunset just nodded, probably unable to speak from the tears in her eyes and what was likely a lump in her throat. Luna pulled the girl into a crushing hug and bounced and spun her around, “HUZZAH, HUZZA’Y!! THREE CHEERS AND RAH-HAH!”

“Luna, her ears are right next to your mouth,” Celestia chided good-naturedly through her own laughter, “Be careful with the Royal Voice!”

Only barely chided, Luna still bounced around the horses in celebration, though without her jubilant shouting, Sunset’s buoyant laughter could be heard. Celestia suddenly found herself caught up in Luna’s hug, though she was, of course, not going to let herself be tossed about like a doll. Suddenly anchored, the hug flopped apart, only to be immediately re-engaged as Sunset launched herself at Celestia. She let herself be tackled into the snow, Sunset’s laughter was proving contagious, as now all three of them were practically bawling with joy.

It took the better part of a quarter-hour, but the mirth finally settled down enough for the trio to collect themselves off the ground and straighten their mussed clothing. As Luna and Sunset chased after their mounts (which hadn’t actually gone far), Celestia gently patted her horse’s neck while holding the reins and used the pretense of making soothing noises to the horse to speak to Alice, “So, I’m guessing that was what Sunset needed in this universe? And I’m also guessing that I learned what I needed to here?”

Alice leaned against the horse’s torso and smiled smugly at Celestia. “Yup! And yes, next year the family comes back here to celebrate solstice again...and if I say any more than that I’ll piss off a goddess or two here, so I’ll stop, but you did good, kid.”

Celestia smiled at the ethereal guide, “That’s good to know...so why am I still here? Do I have to do anything more? Is there anything else at stake that I should know about?”

Alice shrugged, “Well, I mean kinda. Mostly it’s about letting the timer run out on the restraints I put on ol’ Queenie there,” she used her tablet as a pointer to indicate Celestia’s head, “But nah, there’s just one more thing left. I mean, why go to a world of High Fantasy and Magic and Wizards…”

Luna’s voice broke across the snow and in moments her horse carried her up to Celestia, “Sister! The keep, it’s been infested by harpies!”

Sunset rode up on her steed a moment later, clearly having heard her new aunt’s proclamation, “Harpies? I don’t have any experience with them in this world. In mine they’re a tiny tribe near the Tenochtitlan basin, they’re horribly xenophobic and are known to kill anyone that even comes close to their territory.”

Luna shook her head, “Nay, harpies here are denizens of the Chaos Realms themselves. They stink of the rot of deepest Tartarus and serve the fell Lords of the Pit as messengers. To find one here on the Prime Material Plane is either a mob of harpies seeking to carve out their own fiefdom or harbingers of the very devils testing our mettle!”

Alice smirked at Celestia, “...if you don’t get a chance to smite a few monsters with your kick-ass magic sword?”

Celestia allowed a smirk to cross her face, “Sister,” she said aloud, “It’s been a while since you and I cleared out a den of hostiles. What say you to leading the charge?” She realized she was falling back on the “ye olde” speech patterns from her days in the drama club in high school, but it did seem to fit.

The other woman drew her sword with a flourish, “Zounds, sister! ‘Tis a grand idea! Get thy rump upon thy steed so that we may slay these foul underworld denizens!” She then wheeled her horse around and directed it to charge up the path to the nearby keep.

Celestia mounted her horse and turned to Sunset, who was grinning fit to burst, “I do believe she just told me to, ah, ‘get my ass in gear,’” she said, mimicking the stilted way Queen Celestia pronounced Sunset’s Equestrian turns of phrase.

Sunset burst out laughing. “I didn’t think I ever said that in your earshot!” After admitting that she had used foul language in the presence of her new adopted mother, she winked at the older woman and spurred her horse after her aunt’s.

With a laugh of her own, she urged her mount to chase after the other two.

Minutes later, she was marveling at her sister and her student wielding forces that she would have sworn was impossible before the Fall Formal. She merely sat on her horse, watching stunned as the pair wielded their swords and their magic with absolute efficiency. There were words of High Elvish spoken, but they were spoken with economy and control and always preceded some form of magical attack. Sunset seemed to prefer fire-based attacks while Luna was using mostly electrical bolts of several varieties. While Luna was mostly casting with her sword as a focus, Sunset was using her hands, her sword, even a thrown sling bullet at one point.

Of normal speech, there was plenty. Luna was practically bouncing around, showing no more effort to her combat than a fitness instructor doing an ‘Aerobics for Dummies’ workout. “Sunset, ‘tis interesting, I thought you were an equine in your previous body before transversing the mirror?”

Sunset was at least showing more strain at keeping up with her aunt, “Yeah,” she panted, “A unicorn…” Her next move was obviously an attempt to impress Luna, as she made some complex motions with her hands, summoning a spectral sun, in the yin-yang style that Celestia had seen as her cutiemark in countless universes now. It coalesced and a pair of fireballs flew from either side of the twisted sun, launching at a bird-like creature that had as much to do with the harpy Rainbow Dash as the xenomorphs in that one horror movie her sister dragged her to when they were kids had to do with humans. The nightmare vulture with human arms sticking out from under it’s wings immediately lit with ‘whoosh,’ the inferno not stopping even when it dropped from the sky and into the snow. Keeping her sword arm ready, she put her other fist on her hip and grinned cockily at her aunt.

Luna just returned a matching grin and leapt off her horse. Before she could hit the ground, a pair of angel wings, every feather as black as a crow’s, and launched herself into the air. She began chanting and within the space of a few breaths, the sky seemed to turn black as night. A wolf’s howl could be heard as a massive crescent moon split the sky like a Cheshire grin, stabbing light down to illuminate the harpies. All but two managed to find their way under some form of shelter before a tremendous CRACK banged across the sky, and lightning arced down from the too-large crescent moon and hit the harpies. By the time the blindness caused by the flash of white-hot air exploding from the lightning had cleared, the creatures were collapsing in heaps of ash and bones. Luna landed next to Sunset with a smug expression, allowing her wings to collapse back to wherever these magical creatures kept them.

Sunset glared at Luna, but Celestia could see there wasn’t any real heat to the expression, and sure enough, a moment later, she dismounted and socked her aunt in the arm with a laugh, “Showoff!”

-ILL-GET LITTLE BRAT OF A FALSE ELFE! CHURLISH CROOKED-NOSED DOXY! THY PARENTAGE IS OF A GOAT AND A SLUG! echoed through Celestia’s head

Ah, you’re back… she thought sardonically.

I’m not talking to you! the elder Celestia snapped back.

Well, you probably should, Celestia thought back as she dismounted, The remaining harpies are coming this way and I have no experience with this thing. So saying, she drew her sword and turned to face the harpies that were charging her, running instead of trying to take to the sky, especially smart given how easily Luna had dispatched the others with a skyborne attack.

Celestia could practically feel a growl echo through the thoughtscape they were sharing as the two vulture-creatures raised their polearms and screeched at her. Fine, snipped the thought, Then do this… A sudden torrent of thoughts, words (magic and otherwise), mental commands for how to move parts of the body, even whole mental states that needed to be held for certain parts of the sequence were slammed into Celestia’s awareness. It was too big for her to parse, too much to make sense of in the time available, she had only one choice, and that was to simply let the ‘thought packet’ do whatever Queen Celestia wanted it to do.

So she did.

Her body suddenly gained the lithe grace of a crane as she moved into what in her world was recognizable from martial arts posters as a common sword stance from oriental martial styles. She turned slightly so she was side-on to the charging creatures, one leg stretched out in their direction and the other bent in a half-squat at a right angle to the other leg. Her sword arm was curled to hold her sword above her head, tip facing the enemy and crosspiece pinched casually between her thumb and forefinger while the grip rested in her palm. Her other arm stretched toward the charging enemies, her thumb, ring, and pinkie fingers curled into a half fist, her index and middle fingers pointed outward. She chanted words she only barely understood and then flexed her wrist, bringing her pointed fingers up into a ‘V’ sign. She felt magic gathering as the two creatures came within whatever radius Queen Celestia had selected for what she was doing, then flicked her hand forward, as though to toss a pebble.

A gleam from above, as though the sun itself was lending her support, flickered across the snowy landscape. Before the harpies could take another step, twin columns of plasma, bright as the sun itself, suddenly appeared where the two creatures had been. The past tense being the correct word usage, for as quick as the jets of liquid light hit, they disappeared, leaving no trace of the creatures they obliterated, the only hint of their presence was a pair of twinned sigils in the ground, both perfect representations of Queen Celestia’s glyph of a stylized sun.

The other two were looking at her, Luna with an exasperated glare, Sunset with her jaw dropped. Celestia simply lifted her fingers to her mouth like the barrel of a gun and blew the imaginary smoke at her fingertips with a wink.

Alice’s insubstantial form walked out through the walls of the keep. With a grin, she just nodded at Celestia, “Bongo!”

Sunset chuckled at the ridiculous, apparently true story about a man, far too much drink, and a set of triplet ladies, “...and then he just looks up and says, ‘Bingo, Bango, Bongo!’”

She rolled her eyes as her visitor cackled over his triple-malt scotch. “You know, I imagine Al would probably tell that story better.”

The man simply grinned at her, “Hey, the man can’t be here himself, so someone’s gotta carry the torch.”

As cliche as it was, Sunset found herself running a towel over an empty glass for the fourth time as she chatted with her latest customer. She’d been learning that the multiverse held a handful of people like the pair of them; individuals seemingly untethered from their home timelines, apparently immortal (though none of them were ready to test the theory), and all dedicated to helping the people they interacted with in the only ways they could. Amusingly, the longer she did this “job,” the more she grew to understand her mentor from her youth. Someone so far removed from the people they helped, who’s lifespans were so fleetingly short that they may as well have been mayflies, but who she couldn’t do anything but help. The memories of those interactions may get lost to the ages such individuals lived through, but each and every interaction was special and sacred in its own way and Sunset couldn’t help but feel richer and more blessed with every person who came into her bar.

Without any sort of warning, a flicker of light sparked in the middle of open space near the bartop. Said space normally would have held a table, but the isekai had rearranged things for her guest, who had earlier asked if she had a piano that he could plink around on.

Sunset blinked her eyes in confusion and quickly glanced from the blossoming miniature star that was bursting to life in her bar and back to her guest. “Hey,” he smirked and saluted her with his beer from across the piano’s top, “Don’t look at me, this one isn’t one of mine.”

Sunset couldn’t help but triple-take as this flurry of light, which was even now starting to coalesce into a humanoid shape, in moments faded to reveal the form of Principal Celestia. The only thing that was significantly different about this version of Celestia from the one she remembered from her high school days was the presence of a belt that looked more like it came from a world where battle-gear was common enough to become casual wear. The woman stumbled briefly as she spun around to orient herself but recovered quickly enough that neither of the two that had previously been the only occupants of the bar needed to do anything to assist.

“Huh,” said Sunset’s piano-playing patron, “So that’s what it looks like from this side. Never seen anyone do that trick besides me before.”

Celestia spun around at the sound of a man’s voice and realized that she wasn’t alone. “Um…” she stammered at the man.

He sipped his beer and returned it to the coaster on the piano with a light thump and returned to playing the jaunty, somewhat melancholic tune that wasn’t quite a holiday carol but could easily be one. “Hey, don’t worry, you didn’t take anyone’s body this time, the unsteadiness is using your own body for the first time in a while. New Leaper?” he inquired and informed at the same time with a seasoned grin.

Making a confused sound, Celestia patted down her torso, felt the belt, and then looked around until she found a mirror. “Oh, boy…” she sighed in relief as she saw the same face she knew from the mirror. Naturally, she had been seeing nothing but other versions of herself all night, but being able to view the face with her own eyes was somehow different and reassuring. Without asking, she took a seat at the bar and slumped down, running her hands through her hair as she braced her elbows on the bar top.

“Rough night?” the familiar voice of Sunset Shimmer cut through Celestia’s fatigue. The woman looked up to see Sunset offering her a mug of eggnog that she could smell had more than a little bourbon in it.

Glancing around, Celestia realized that this was the first time since leaving Desert Mirage’s universe that she could probably completely relax around people that were fully expecting what had happened to her so far. She smiled at Sunset and took the offered drink, “That...would be heavenly, thank you!”

Nearly an hour later, Celestia had finished explaining her predicament. “...and so then here I am, and Alice hasn’t shown up yet.”

The man at the piano chuckled, “‘Alice,’ oh, that’s a good one, I’ll have to tell Al about this when I see him next, he’s gonna die laughing!”

Sunset turned an eye that glittered with mischief and irritation all at once to her guest, “That tune you were playing earlier, the Christmas-y one?” He nodded, “Play it again, Sam.”

Sam snorted, “You’ve been waiting all night to use that one, haven’t you?”

Without replying, she simply quirked a smile at him and turned back to Celestia. “So, what’s still bothering you that you needed to come to my bar?”

Celestia made an inquisitive sound as she filled her mouth with the eggnog Sunset kept refilling, “How do you mean?”

The girl smiled indulgently and explained, “My bar doesn’t show up in people’s lives that don’t need someone to talk to. Sure, you came about it in a slightly roundabout fashion, but here you are. And if I may say, for someone who hasn’t used their own body in four worlds, you sure do look like you’ve been through the wringer.”

Celestia looked up to the mirror she had glanced into earlier, the one that seemed to be omnipresent in bars across the multiverse, and saw what her hostess meant. She had dark stress marks under her eyes, so deep it almost looked like she had broken her nose. Her shoulders were hunched together, a clear sign of her subconscious holding on to some problem she couldn’t solve.

Sunset let her have some quiet for a bit, Sam’s piano playing keeping her thoughts moving as she tried to dredge up whatever was still bothering her after all this time of universe hopping.

She looked up at the girl tending her bar and realized that this was the perfect chance to get her question answered, the one that had started this whole mess. “Sunset?” she began.

The girl put down the bottle she had just pulled from its case and turned to her, “Hmm?”

“I told you the problem we’re having with my Sunset...what do you think was bothering her? Why do you think she fled to her room rather than stay and help with the decorations?”

Sunset sighed and leaned forward, crossing her arms as she settled down to ponder the question. “Honestly?” she said after a moment, “If I remember that first year after the Fall Formal right, I was...lonely. I needed to spend time with people, people that loved and cared about me. That’s what made the whole Anon-a-miss incident so...painful.” she gained her own look of pain briefly before shaking her head slowly, “The people I’d grown to depend on for that love in my life...just weren’t there. I mean, I get it now, and I forgive them. They were kids and I was leaning on them like they were six mothers, and I had my own bit of stubbornness mixed in. I should have just made sure Twilight opened the damn portal and stepped through and hashed things out with Celestia.” She nodded at her guest, “Which, funny enough, I eventually did have to do when something similar happened the next summer.” She winked at the principal, “But then, if I were to tell you that story, I’d be spoiling things for you.”

Sam chose to speak up at that point, “Oh, c’mon Sunset, you know the timeline is really more of a suggestion than anything else.”

The former equine snorted, “So says the guy who intentionally turned his own timeline into a ball of twine to prove a point.”

Rather than reply directly, he just gave her a look and went back to playing his piano.

Sunset frowned, gaze burrowing into the man as though to dig up whatever he wasn’t saying, “I hate it when he does that. When any of ‘em do that,” she said almost under her breath.

“‘Them?’” asked Celestia.

“People like us,” she indicated Sam and herself with a wave, “We’re...not linear creatures anymore. Problem is, I’ve noticed that the longer we’re at it, the more we start talking like...well, like oracles instead of people.”

Celestia sipped her eggnog, “I imagine I’ll probably be a bit odd, too, when I get back. I’ve seen my sister, my students, my...daughter in so many different ways that it will naturally color my perception of them. I’m going to have to be careful to not confuse any of them with their counterparts in other universes. That, and lookup if Nagatha ever modeled underwear in my universe.”

Sunset cackled explosively, “Nagatha Harshwhinny? Underwear model?” the question was clearly rhetorical as she was suddenly somber, “So you’ve decided to adopt her, then?”

Celestia tipped back the last of her eggnog and pushed the mug away to indicate she was done with the drink, “I...have, if she’ll have me.” And just like that, she realized the source of tension in her back. “But...what if she doesn’t want me? She hasn’t even been able to speak since the Fall Formal, so we don’t really know what’s going on in her head!” She realized her eyes were tearing up when the sight of the bar started blurring.

She felt rather than saw Sunset’s hand on hers, “If there’s one thing I know from my own story and that of all the other Sunsets I’ve encountered,” said the girl softly, “It’s that we prefer to show rather than tell.”

Celestia blinked her vision clear, her confusion at the odd statement clear on her face.

Sunset smiled as their eyes met, “We Sunsets...said things. Many things that were all about writing checks that, when it came down to it, we couldn’t cash. We didn’t lie often, but when we did it was iron-clad. When we manipulated people, we wielded words like an expert swordsman. Words...don’t mean much to us Sunset Shimmers.” she clasped the principal’s hands in hers, “It’s what we do that speaks of our hearts far more than anything we say. Your Sunset may not be able to say she wants to be with you, maybe even wants to be your daughter officially, but she’s telling you in all the ways that matter most.”

Celestia thought back to all her interactions with the Sunset of her world, the one she now thought of as her daughter, and her eyes started misting again. She thought back to growing up after the incident with Luna’s knife that changed both their lives forever. She could never stay angry at her sister for taking her ability to bear children, not for long, but whenever she thought of children of her own, there was always that momentary hot flash of anger that never quite went away, no matter how often she forgave her sister. And then another chance to be a mother walked into her life, and it turned out the girl who would be her child came from another world entirely.

And she realized at that moment that she would do anything, anything for herdaughter, even go through a thousand nights like the emotional and temporal roller-coaster she just experienced.

Tears started pouring down her face as one of the most painful wounds on her heart, one of the oldest, started to heal. It had to be torn open one last time to do so, and she relived the pain of loss all over again, but in its place came the peace of knowing that she had a child at long last.

Sunset just held her hands as she buried her face in her arms against the bar top.

With a sense of relief, Principal Celestia stepped foot in her own living room under her own power for the first time since this surreal little adventure began. She glanced at the clock, and it appeared time was now flowing as it should, with the minute hand settled nicely at 15 after midnight. As bone-weary as she was, completely exhausted and emotionally wrung, she wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed. She turned as the door she just went through clicked and saw it start to fade from this world. She smiled as she watched it go, somehow feeling more complete than she ever had.

With a sigh, she felt down at her waist, pleased that she was still wearing the belt that Desert Mirage had gifted to her at the start of this final leg of her trip. Curious to see if it was still working, she tapped the touch control for “inventory” and was surprised to see a sword and a carbine rifle. Were she to take a guess, they would probably be similar to the weapons the other versions of Celestia wielded. Brimming with curiosity, she brought the sword out and checked it, and sure enough, it was nearly identical, save for the glyph on the pommel. Where the one in the blade’s homeworld was the symbol of the sun overlaid with the elven rune for “peace,” this one was what she now knew was the common cutiemark for Celestia across the multiverse with the elven rune for “teacher.” Chuckling with amusement, she put the sword back into the inventory slot, then after a moment’s thought did the same with the silver card that Sunset had given her to summon the isekai whenever she might need to talk.

“Sooo…” came the mischievous voice of Alice, “How’d it go?”

Celestia realized only after she did her next action that the only way she did it so readily and so well was because she was still carrying with her the memories and some of the instincts of the other Celestia’s whose bodies she had inhabited, two of which were extremely competent at combat. Her hand lashed out and she snagged the pointed ear of the elf-like woman.

“OW-OW-OW-OW! Stop it!” squawked Alice, “How are you even doing that, you’re not supposed to...OWIEOWOWOW!” she cut off as Celestia pinched tighter.

“Now,” she spoke with the harsh clarity of a high school principal who finally had the class clown dead to rights, “We’re going to make one more trip, you’re going to activate your magic and make sure we get there in one piece, but I’m driving.”

“But what about Sunset and Hearth’s Warming and...owowow!” whined Alice.

“Oh, you’re going to do that little trick with time where I come back to the same time I left. I don’t need to learn how to do it on my own, I just need you to make sure I get back so I can give Luna...whatever that video game was that I’ll be getting her next year.”

“Fine, just stop pinching, it hurts!”

“Not until we’re already at the next stop. You’re not slipping your way out of this.”

Alice grumbled at her and lifted her tablet up so she could see it without having to move her head in Celestia’s grasp. She taped a few buttons, and with much less fanfare than the other times Celestia traveled, they were gone from the living room.

It always will be the world that she sees

Celestia woke with a start as she felt a hand shake her awake. Disoriented, she worried she would find herself in yet another universe, but blinking her sight clear revealed only a concerned Sunset, assistive phone in hand, and behind her the open door of her sister’s bedroom, Luna standing in her pajamas with a concerned look on her face.

“What,” began Luna, “Are you doing sleeping on the floor?”

With a rush, she remembered the nearly frantically spent hours after her final return home last night...or rather this morning. How she had nearly immediately pulled out her computer and began pulling up websites, horribly abusing her status as a high school principal to find, alter, and even flat out create records. Using her knowledge and skills she picked up from watching her counterparts from across the multiverse and even a few that she’d learned as a college student that she hadn’t used since that could very easily land her in legal trouble if anyone ever found out. Of calling Chrysalis at 2:30 in the morning on Hearth’s Warming Day and allowing the surly federal agent the chance to vent about being woken up by her old college roommate at un-GOD-ly hours on Freaking Hearth’s Warming and, “Do you know how little sleep I get running a branch of the F.B.I.?” Of swearing under pain of every law she had broken in the previous 2.5 hours to come to the attention of the absolutely worst possible authorities if Celestia ever revealed what Chrysalis was about to do for her to anyone that she would owe the woman a favor at a later date (as long as said favor wouldn’t result in Celestia having to injure or kill someone, the principal was firm on that).

“SUNSET!” Celestia gasped and grabbed the girl firmly into a very strong, very affectionate hug. The poor girl was pulled out of her crouch and squished awkwardly, her face buried in Celestia’s hair and shoulder. After the initial flailing about, the girl hesitantly patted the principal on the shoulder with one hand while gently pushing against the floor with the other, her pajama-clad rump at an embarrassing angle as she tried to keep her body from folding in ways it wasn’t supposed to from the surprise fondness.

Only Luna’s snickering brought her sister out of her reverie, “Right...sorry, Sunset.” She released the girl from the hold and let her back away. A confused but not unhappy look on her face told Celestia that she was on the right track with the gift she had thrown together in the wee hours of the morning. She picked up the packet next to her, looking no more impressive than an inter-office mailer envelope, though perhaps a little impressive in its thickness due to the contents. She handed it to Luna before heaving herself off the floor. “Sorry if I worried you two, a LOT happened last night after we all went to bed, and I wanted to make sure you didn’t go opening presents or anything before I could tell you what happened.” She swayed a little on her feet, her words clearly doing nothing to assuage the concerns of the other two women. “Listen, I’ve had a much longer night than is actually possible under most physics models and I need some coffee in the worst way. I will tell you everything I can…” she was interrupted by her own yawn, “...over breakfast.” So saying, she stumbled her way to the kitchen.

The other two watched her go, not moving until they heard the sounds of cupboards opening and the coffee grinder being used. Luna and Sunset turned to look at each other, “...’most physics models’...?” she parroted in confusion.

Sunset only shrugged.

Celestia was nursing what was perhaps her fourth cup of coffee since being woken up, her very hearty breakfast of the biggest omelet Luna could remember her ever having long since greedily devoured. The tale had been bizarre and honestly unbelievable, even for a pair of women who’d taken a former unicorn into their house. Only the fact that Celestia was able to take the belt off and drape it over the back of her chair lent full credence to her story.

“...and so after that last jaunt into the multiverse, I had Alice drop me off here and got to work on this.” She patted the envelope she had woken up with. Save for when she had first stumbled into the kitchen, she had refused to part with it once Luna had joined her and relinquished the packet back to it’s author’s custody.

Sunset was looking pensive. She had spent the entire time of the story listening carefully and reacting...enigmatically. During the retelling of the scenes from her filly-hood, she clammed up. For all the responses Celestia expected, that was the one she’d been dreading. It meant that her youth was where the pain was, and with a full night’s sleep, the girl was unlikely to be as open emotionally as she had the day before. Well, she thought hopefully, Maybe I was able to figure out what she needed for a gift and that pain will be healed, at least a little.

Once they got past that portion (with Luna cackling in appreciation at the mention of Cadence also being a “pretty pony princess”), Sunset had been vacillating from incredulous to angry to near tears at the full story of the Anon-a-Miss incident.

“To think such a thing could be happening under our very noses and we wouldn’t notice until such...damage was being done.” Luna had said, shaking her head.

“I know,” replied Celestia, “But we both know that often the teachers and administrators are sometimes the last people to know when something’s happening in the student population. At least I know the staff is ready and able to deal with it when such a crisis does occur.”

Luna nodded, “And you think this won’t happen here? Because…?” she took a sip of her own coffee.

Celestia tilted her own head at Sunset, who was clearly processing what had happened to the other versions of herself during the holidays, remaining quiet and poking at her breakfast cereal, “Because of something Bori said. When I watched Sunset be rejected by her friends that first time, she said, ‘Celestia never needed to take in Sunset after the fall formal,’ or something like that. I don’t think she would have said that if our Sunset were following the same events as those others.” Sunset looked up, startled at the possessiveness that Celestia had pronounced the girl as ‘our Sunset.’ Celestia just smiled warmly at the former unicorn and continued speaking, “I think that whatever happened with the Elements that forced this different outcome made it so the circumstances of Anon-a-Miss would happen in all those other universes would never happen here.”

From there, the tale had taken a turn for the weird that finally drew more than just incredulous scrutiny. When the story of her ‘leaping’ from one possible future to the next began, both Sunset and Luna leaned forward. Save for nearly absent bites of their breakfast, they nearly forgot their food as the most incredible part of the tale was spun for them. Luna and Sunset both cackled with merriment as Celestia explained how they were to be married in one universe, marveled wide-eyed at that tale of the millennia-old vampire and her recently turned daughter. It was only when Celestia started describing being a vampire hunter that Luna grew incredulous again, but this time more from shocked disbelief at the behavior of the alternate versions of the other members of the staff, especially Cheerilee.

“Remind me never to let that woman convince me to take her to a disco again, she’s clearly still stuck in the 80’s.” she had said with a shake of her head.

Sunset had impressed them both by using the digital assistant built into her phone to catch a sound clip of Celestia explaining that Harshwhinny had been a model, then fed the clip into the search function to find that, yes, Nagatha Harshwhinny had indeed been a model; an underwear model.

All three of them were in hysterics over that revelation.

When the wild ride was finally over, Sunset had taken a moment to go into the living room and touch the wall where Celestia had said the doorway had appeared. The two older women weren’t sure what she was looking for, and since she couldn’t tell them, by unspoken agreement they chose to let it be for the time being.

So they now sat at the dining island, and for a moment silence reigned. Celestia took another sip of her coffee and put down the cup. She braced herself, then stood. With deliberate ceremony, she picked up the envelope and rounded the table the short distance to stand next to Sunset. The girl, clearly sensing the import of the moment from Celestia, pushed her chair out slightly and turned in her seat to face the woman.

“Sunset Shimmer,” began Celestia as she handed the envelope to her student, “I know...I know you never felt like you had a home growing up.” Sunset took the envelope and, at Celestia’s nod, opened the flap and pulled out the packet. As she started reading the top of the first page, Celestia continued, “I want you to be aware that this is only a formality right now. I don’t want to make you feel like you’re being pushed into something you...you may not want.” Celestia felt her eyes grow damp, realizing suddenly that she had put quite a bit more emotion into this than she had expected. She’s just another student with a unique background. Just like all the rest...no, that’s a lie I don’t have the luxury of anymore. She’s my daughter in my heart. Whether she chooses to be when she can speak again or not, that will be up to her. It’s no different than any other parent getting their teen ready to face the world.

She squared her shoulders and looked Sunset, who had just finished skimming over the first page of the packet and looked up at Celestia in shock, in the eye, “You...I know you have a homeworld to go back to. You could probably go back at any time and there’s nothing that I or my sister could do to stop you...and if that’s your choice, I’ll support it fully and you won’t hear one complaint from me,” she reached up and gripped Sunset by the shoulders, “But Sunset, sweetie, if you do that and want to come back, or if you choose to stay in this world...whether you want to stay with Luna and I or you want to figure out how to go it on your own, you will always…” Celestia’s throat tightened up, she sniffed to hold back some tears that were threatening to spill and realized she was hearing a second sniffle, probably from her sister, “You will always have a home with me.”

Sunset was trembling, alternating between glancing down at the paperwork and back up to Celestia, her own eyes threatening to spill tears, a question reflected with the holiday lights on the tree behind the wetness.

Celestia nodded, “Yes, they say I’m your mother. I had to make a deal I’d rather not have and break a few laws, but it was to make sure you would have a paper-trail. You don’t have to treat me like I’m your mom if you don’t…”

This time she was interrupted by the packet practically being thrown onto the dining island countertop and Sunset lunging out of her chair and into Celestia’s arms, clutching the older woman in a bear hug that was so tight Celestia was seeing spots. Sobs that were the sound of a heart both rending and mending were muffled by Celestia’s shirt, Sunset having buried her face in Celestia’s collar again, this time by choice.

Luna was sniffing and blinking rapidly. “I’ll just make sure the papers don’t get covered in breakfast leftovers…” she said as she tried to beat a retreat. A retreat which took her past the epic hug, which was, it turned out, an Epic Hug Vortex as the bawling Sunset Shimmer reached out to pull Luna into the hug as well.

Several hours and one power-nap later, Celestia sat on the couch between her sister and the girl who was now (on paper, at least) her daughter. Her arms were draped over the pair of them, and they were all in the blissful stupor of post-holiday celebration that overcomes those who poured everything they had into enjoying the few hours of a holiday and didn’t regret a moment of it. The television was on next to the TV displaying the annual eight-hour Hearth’s Warming log burning. The sound turned down so only the occasional pop and crackle of the sound of a burning fire could be heard. The afternoon was stretching on, and Sunset was reading a copy of Dead Librarians are Not Easy, a book that Celestia had read a bit of at her sister’s recommendation and found it to be a little...frivolous for her taste. Well enough written and amusing at parts, but not on the level of the epic fantasy that Celestia preferred to read about...or would she still want to read it now that she’d lived it? The book had been one of Luna’s gifts to Sunset, who for all Celestia didn’t like the work Sunset seemed to be devouring it with great relish.

Actually, I might find stories of a vampire librarian in a modern world more interesting now that I’ve been a vampire, mused Celestia.

Luna stirred from her hot-cocoa-induced stupor enough to hum, a behavior that Celestia knew meant her sister had been silently ruminating on something and now had something to say about it. Sunset seemed to pick up on this, too, and lowered the book enough to look at her new aunt.

“You mentioned a world where there was no magic and the Sunset there was spiraling into depression as Bori pulled you back here right after saying that it was the most important stop she was going to have you make. Given how much else happened last night for you, why was that your most important stop?”

Celestia smiled, both with a hint of mischief and something else the other two couldn’t quite place. Of course, if they’d met the three reindeer, the Sunset who ran the inter-universal bar, or even just that Sunset’s friend Sam, they would have recognized the hint of otherworldly knowing that they had all had, and now Celestia had it as well. “It wasn’t my most important stop. Or rather, it wasn’t the most important stop for me.”

Sunset tilted her head in inquiry and Luna provided the actual question, “What does that even mean?”

“Remember that one last stop I had Alice take me on? The one I didn’t tell you any of the details about?” The other two nodded, “I don’t know how Bori knew or how Alice didn’t, but it turned out that I was the one that could help out Sunset the most...both of me.”

Celestia just giggled at their confused expressions before she finally told them the last bit of the story of Sunset Shimmer’s Best Gift Ever.

Author's Note

Yet another one posted without a pre-reader or editor. After all this time I just want it up and done. For those who've posted fixes on the last chapter, I promise I'll get to them soon!

Epilogue - Beside this window, I will wait, for inside this night I know it's not too late

She stared at the brown liquid in the glass. She knew well enough that she could escape into the effects of alcohol and, for a while at least, the ache in her heart would be numbed, just a little. After her sister left, Celeste finally let the tears fall that had been building behind her eyelids. As tempting as it was to drown her emotions in the sweet slumber of alcohol, she couldn’t bring herself to drink the brandy her sister poured for her. She had always been a bit of a lightweight drinker compared to Selene, for all she was taller and thus had more body mass. A part of her, some deep and hidden piece of her soul that she had grown used to listening to, said to not allow herself to be inebriated this night because she would be needed. Specifically that Sunset would need her.

She felt a fresh wave of the bitter tears pour down her cheeks as she thought of the girl. They had started getting so close. When she had finally recovered from the metaphorical gut-check the events of the Fall Formal had delivered to her worldview and perception of reality, she had started taking a direct and personal interest in Sunset Shimmer’s life. The five girls the visiting princess had tasked with taking care of her were strong, intelligent (usually), and wonderful young women, but they weren’t adults and they had their own lives that nobody could rightly demand they put on hold for a refuge. There was no precedent, no laws or structure or means of handing Sunset over to any sort of authority, especially in the current political climate in the United States surrounding illegal immigrants; Sunset would enter the system and disappear as she would be shuttled from agency to agency and possibly incarcerated with no homeland to send her to. Celeste couldn’t let that happen, so had severely bent (and broken) a few laws to become legal guardian to the girl on paper, even so far as owing her old college rival Chrystal a favor in exchange for listing Celeste as Sunset’s mother, using Celeste’s own deceased child’s Social Security number to establish Sunset’s legal documentation. Celeste then used the convenience of the requirement to discipline Sunset to have the girl to stay after school in the principal’s office under the guise of detention to start being a guide and mentor to her.

And she was making real progress! Sunset began to respond to Celeste’s attention like a hothouse flower that had been transplanted to the desert getting water for the first time in weeks. The passage of weeks flew by as the tentative bond of educator and student began to grow into something more, something as strong as (dare she even think it?) mother and daughter.

And then the Anonymous blog started up. The moniker, suspected of being associated with (or at least inspired by) the Anonymous group that had made headlines a few years back, was used to implicate Sunset of being some form of whistleblower or snitch or stool-pigeon, depending on who was being asked. No matter who was asked, though, the sentiment was universal; Sunset Shimmer, legitimate she-demon, banished alien, was up to her old tricks. That it couldn’t possibly be Sunset was transparent to Celeste (not to mention the rest of the staff once they caught wind of it) was lost on the student body, and no matter how hard she and the staff tried to quell the idea, it spread like a bad flu virus.

Even worse for Celeste was watching impotently as the girls that Sunset had grown close to began pulling away, one at a time, until they all chose to confront her. Sunset’s protests fell on deaf ears, and she was alone once again, this time because of an anonymous cyber-bully instead of by choice. Even more heartbreaking was Sunset truly believing that she deserved what was happening to her.

Naturally, Celeste had the school district’s lawyers on the job as soon as she found the blog. It was the bully’s greatest mistake to target Laura Hart rather than loop the girl in. Laura’s conspiracy theorist hobby would have made her the perfect co-conspirator, but they instead opted to ‘out’ the girl as a lesbian. If Laura’s girlfriend had been anyone else, the bullies might have gotten away with it, but then, Bonny and Laura’s relationship was a secret so deep that even the girls’ parents were completely in the dark about it. The only reason Celeste was aware of it was Bonny’s unofficial role as “student spy,” keeping her ear to the student gossip circles, investigating likely leads, then reporting directly to Celeste when she found evidence of something that violated school rules or the law. The pair had brought the saved screenshots and links to the live blog pages with Laura in tears that she had been outed without her consent. From there it was handled as swiftly as possible, but the damage had been done. The student body’s morale was in tatters and Sunset was growing more and more distant.

The last anyone had seen of Sunset was when Celeste and Selene had tried and failed to follow her to wherever she was going after school every day. They had managed to tail the girl as far as a Chinese restaurant near the warehouse district, but then lost the trail. There were simply too many possible ways the girl could have gone, too many twists and turns adding to the problem. If they’d had more manpower or more time…

Celeste unlocked her phone again, looking at the picture of the girl that had wormed her way into her heart. With a sigh, she leaned back in her chair and glanced around the study, willing to trade every last penny her parents left her in order to have Sunset with her, safe and sound. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose briefly, then opened them again.

There was a woman sitting in the chair on the other side of her desk.

It was simply that quick; one moment she was alone in the room, the next she had a visitor.

The woman was like a bizarre clown funhouse mirror of herself. Skin so pale she might have been a goth or a vampire cosplayer and hair in a pastel rainbow of colors. Her suit was a more colorful version of Celeste’s, but where she wore her suit unornamented, the woman across from her had a pin that had a stylized sun.

Before Celeste could gather her thoughts enough to respond, the woman stood and reached out for her. “Celeste, my name is Celestia. Yes, I know it seems impossible, and I can explain on the way. We need to go get Sunset. I know where she is.”

Celeste gaped at the woman, glancing between her face and the outstretched hand, “...are you the princess?”

Celestia chuckled darkly, “No, thank goodness. I’m from another universe entirely. Now let’s go get your girl. You’ll need to drive because I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay in this universe after you’ve found her and she won’t be in any condition to walk here from the warehouse she’s in.”

Once again ecstatically glad she had listened to that little voice in the back of her head, she reached out to grasp the woman’s hand. “Show me the way.”

The End

Christmas 2019

Principal Celestia’s adventures continue in ‘My Empire of Dirt’

Author's Note

Finally done!

Honestly, the last chapter felt like an epilogue after the Epic Chapter of Doom that came before it, but this was pretty much always where this story was going.

Fun fact: I had completed this epilogue before "The candles burning, you know I'm gonna wait, the clock keeps turning, but I know it's not too late" was a fully-fledged outline. I wrote it right on the heels of finishing Celeste's scene at the end of "If you'd just believe, Just believe with me."

If you've made it this far, you're probably eagerly awaiting Chapter 5 of My Empire of Dirt. I don't have it quite as ready to go as I did this last chapter and epilogue, but I have been working on it and I'm enjoying the writing of it, so it's just down to carving the time out of my schedule to do so.

I hope you enjoyed this (very) late Christmas gift to my fans as I enjoyed making it, even as much of a headache and nightmare it was to produce what was supposed to be a "quick little short story that I should be able to dash off in about a week or two."

See you in Empire!

But all these things are now long gone, and not to be wished upon again

Author's Note

Many much thanks to WanderD for letting me borrow the isekai. I promise it will be returned with a minimum number of dings and scrapes. :pinkiehappy:

But all these things are now long gone, and not to be wished upon again

Celestia wasn’t sure what woke her, but what kept her awake was a glowing from somewhere on the other side of her bedroom door. Through the gap between the jam and the door (she had taken to keeping the door open when she slept in case Sunset called out to her in the girl’s sleep) an aquamarine light glimmered and shimmered. She couldn’t quite place what the corruscating light made her think of, but considering that it might be something to do with the journal, she got up to investigate.

Upon entering the living room, she found a woman. She was old appearing, but given the presence of pointed ears just a shade of lighter green than the rest of her skin and her entire person being the source of the glow, Celestia was willing to bet that she could be any age. Magic...damnit.

Celestia allowed herself a brief moment to boggle on how she had already become jaded to the supernatural before saying, “Hello, I’m sorry, is it common in Equestria to enter people’s homes uninvited?”

The elfin woman chuckled as she eyed Celestia, “My, my, it’s as though I’m looking at Celestia when she was just a wee filly. My little...well, human,” the being emphasized the species name with a chuckle, “I came at your request.”

Celestia blinked, “I’m sorry, I asked the Princess…”

“You asked about a gift for someone close to your heart. Celestia is a matchless leader, but when it comes to gifts, my sisters and I have no peer.”

Celestia’s eyebrows scrunched together, What is it with people today? I don’t have that kind of relationship with Sunset, she’s my student not my dau… she stopped her line of thinking before it could resolve itself and instead spoke to the newcomer, “I wrote to see if there was anything in Sunset Shimmer’s past that might explain her depression, not necessarily about a gift.”

“Ah, but you see, the two are one and the same. For Sunset’s broken heart is about her Unfulfilled Gift. And this holiday season, young Celestia, you are the one that can give her the gift that will heal her heart.”

Celestia chose not to pursue the oddly emphasized words and addressed something more pressing, “So can you tell me what gift she never got that led to this? I need to know to help my...student.”

“Oh, I can’t tell you that,” said the woman, “But I can show you. We just need to borrow some magic from a friend, then we’ll be off. Between my sisters and I, we will give you what you need to give Sunset her greatest gift ever.”

“‘Borrow’ some magic? And just who are you and your sisters?”

The woman smiled even more deeply, like a favorite aunt who was just asked the right question in a brain-teaser game, “My name is Aurora, and I will show you the gifts that Sunset has received before. You’ll meet my sister Bori after we’re done, and she’ll show you the gifts Sunset is enjoying now...or perhaps not even aware that she has and so is suffering from the lack of them. And then Alice will show you about the gifts of Sunset’s future, and perhaps yours if you let her fully into your heart.”

Celestia thought about this statement, parsing it out before pinching the bridge of her nose, as if to clear up a sudden headache. “Alright, give me a top-hat and call me Snowfall Frost. At least this won’t be about me needing to learn about the true spirit of Hearth’s Warming or something.” She tugged her pajama top straighter on her frame, “Can I at least change into something suitable for leaving the house?”

As the clock in the living room struck midnight, Aurora giggled, and with a wave of her hand Celestia now stood wearing her usual business casual attire that she wore to school. She then stood aside to reveal a doorway. Being that they were in a house didn’t make the presence of doors particularly unusual, but doors that would normally be seen on the outside of buildings was. Giving the appearance of solid oak with a stone arch and Sunset’s symbol on the door (the princesses had called it a “cutie mark”) and a blank chalk sign next to the door itself. She wasn’t sure why the chalkboard being blank should strike her as odd considering she was looking at a major architectural overhaul suddenly appearing in her living room, but it was an oddity on an oddity that just jangled her nerves.

“Am I actually dreaming?” she inquired of the otherworldly being, “Is this just my overworked brain trying to clear out the cobwebs?”

Aurora chuckled, “Whether ‘tis a dream or magic, would you really be able to tell the difference?”

Celestia’s mouth quirked into an inquisitive frown, “...point. OK, let’s get this over with.” She advanced to the door.

The elfin woman gently clasped Celestia’s wrist as she passed, then turned to walk with her. Abruptly, Celestia felt a surge up her arm and flood into her entire body. It was somewhat akin to having liquid bees poured into her, but the feeling passed fairly quickly. As she looked down to see what had happened, she realized she was partially transparent...and also glowing just a little.

Before she could really take in the change to her being, Aurora gently but persistently continued pulling her by her wrist straight through the heavy wooden door. This would have been less jarring to Celestia if Aurora had first opened the door, but such apparently normal niceties didn’t seem to be a concern for the Equestrian being. Celestia had just enough time to register that they were in a bar of some sort before she was shoved back through the door again.

Sunset, crouched down behind the bar next to a case of new stock, nearly jumped out of her skin as the bell over the door jangled oddly. It was so disturbingly discordant from it’s usual happy jingle that had she not known better, she’d have thought that the bell were offended by something. Carefully, she put the twinned bottles of a binary liquor Rarity had dropped off earlier in their spot below the counter and stood to face the door.

“Hello, welcome to Suns...huh?”

The bar was empty of anyone else. Thinking back, Sunset realized she hadn’t heard the sound of the door open when the bell rang. She padded around the bar and over to the small hallway, studying the bell and closed door for a moment, then shrugged and returned to unpacking her latest acquisitions.

As if being impossibly passed through a closed door weren’t enough, there was a disorienting not-dizzy feeling, as though she had just been forcibly made completely still for the briefest of moments, all the way down to her autonomic functions and the thoughts in her brain. How she could even process the sense that her brain stopped working for a moment jarred with everything she knew, causing the feeling of wrongness to amplify all the more.

When her senses stopped reeling, she found herself facing a horse.

A bark of surprise caused her to jump up and take a step back and through another wall. Once again, she passed right through the solid matter and into a building. This particular building must have been a sweets shop, as she could see the confections set up on counters and in displays as another horse...no, a pony, as it was much, much shorter than her...used the horn on its head to generate a magical field to shuffle a pile of the bon bons into a small bag, which was then passed over to a much smaller pony waiting eagerly. She realized it had to be a filly, as she had her hair in pigtails and her tail shifted just enough to see...yup, filly...and TMI! thought Celestia. The little filly caught the floating bag with her mouth (Celestia noted a lack of horn) and then casually tossed it overhead onto her back, then bounded out of the candy shop...right through Celestia’s transparent legs.

Appropriately freaked out, Celestia staggered back, arms windmilling as her brain tried to process the instinctual reaction to avoid collisions as she passed through the wall again out onto the street and was caught by Aurora’s arms. “Easy, young Celestia. Just breath.” With something solid besides the ground that Celestia’s senses could confirm with touch and sight, she realized Aurora was providing an anchor that she latched onto like a drowning woman. Grabbing the woman’s arm and holding on, she closed her eyes to allow her panic to ebb.

Several deep breaths later, she opened her eyes and saw a holiday wonderland.

She blinked a few times, the wonderland didn’t go away.

Gregorian and Regency architecture writ small stretched for miles around. It was like looking at an amalgamation of old world cities mixed with the finest high fantasy. If her home of Canterlot City was like a post-modern art-deco project, this version of Canterlot was lifted straight from a snowglobe. What first looked like gothic mansions dressed up in confectioners fondant turned out to be administration buildings upon closer examination. A squat structure that looked like a tiered three layer cake with Hearth’s Warming decorations turned out to be a post office. The buildings around her were one- or two-story and looked like they came from a children’s Hearth’s Warming toy set, but as her gaze across the sloping city drifted, the streets and all the buildings were focussed on a single architectural artifact, a castle that even Malt Dizzy would weep with envy over. There was no equivalent from her world for this edifice which could easily double as a cake topper for a little girl’s birthday. Arches and spires blended with walls and security checkpoints so perfectly that no seams could be seen where concrete, stone, or metal would have them to mar the edifice. Colors ranged from white to pastel tones across the entire city. There was not a hint of smog to be seen or smelled, and as she traced the skyline with her eyes she realized that it was actually night out. The city was so well lit with lights overall, which was then supplemented by the holiday lighting, that it seemed as bright as day unless one looked up to the sky. There was, unfortunately, so much light pollution that stars couldn’t be seen, but there was a moon, practically dominating the sky with it’s solitude, the craters and shadows on its face looking so very similar to the profile of a unicorn’s head in silhouette that Celestia would have sworn it had to be a created artifact. If this moon was anything near the size of her own, she couldn’t imagine how that large a project would have been done...but then this world had the kind of magic that apparently allowed the ignoring of silly things like ‘gravity’ and ‘relativity,’ so she supposed it may be possible to simply cast a spell to put someone’s face on the moon.

Pegasus ponies flew in and out, all of them clearly on official business and carefully watched by guards-ponies strategically placed around the perimeter. Celestia’s eyes tracked one as it left what looked like a glorified service entrance, bypassed a security checkpoint with a wave to the soldiers, and made its way in her direction through the city. She tracked the stallion, it’s clay colored coat highlighted by a bright yellow cutiemark whose details she couldn’t make out, as it breezed by much smaller turrets and towers on the surrounding mansions and shops, until it made it’s way passed what looked like a former city wall that had long ago been repurposed into a decorative series of columns, each bearing some form of holiday decorations that looked very much like what she would expect of Hearth’s Warming celebrations in her own world. Blinking as she realized she lost track of the pegasus, she glanced around to see a pair of (What, normal? Non-special? What did Equestrians call ponies without horns or wings?) ponies that were walking very close to each other, slowly and casually strolling down the lane and enjoying an intimate moment.

Feeling like an intruder in that tender scene, Celestia whipped around and found Aurora standing nearby. When did I let go of her? She looked down at her own body and let out a relieved breath when she realized she had not undergone any metamorphosis upon entering Equestria. She looked up at the elfin woman, also still humanoid, and inquired, “I thought going from one universe to the other made our forms change, that’s what the girls told me happened to Twilight when she came to our world…?”

Aurora nodded, “This isn’t my true form, but as I have the wisdom and experience to deal with the changes and you have but the night in my world, and we have much to do, so I used the borrowed magic to bring you across the bridge between worlds. I’d rather you not have to learn to use four legs, wings, a horn, or any combination of the three when your time would be better served learning of what you must while we’re here.”

Celestia stepped aside as a delivery-pony pulled a cart down the street through the spot she’d been standing in. Sure, it would have passed right through her, but she was just creeped out by the idea. “And that is what?”

Aurora smiled and nodded past Celestia, “‘That’ is coming down the street now.”

Celestia turned to see a procession, led by a unicorn in guard armor, flanked by four ‘normal’ ponies and accompanied by a small flight of six pegasii above what looked to be a chariot-style carriage. While the Roaman-esque armor on the ponies and the gold and gem encrusted carriage were fascinating and beautiful in their own way, what was in the carriage blew them all away.

A mare, and even without being a good judge of equine physiology Celestia could tell this specimen was female, sat in the carriage and allowed herself to be pulled. Even with the clear layer of fatty tissue, she still had the well defined musculature of a well trained race horse. She easily would have stood at double the height of the ponies around her at the shoulder, then add to that her long neck and seemingly longer horn coming from her head and Celestia would bet the being in front of her could easily be nine feet tall from hoof to horntip. A gleaming white coat that almost seemed to iridesce as she watched the procession only caused the glowing and waving pastel mane that was probably as long as Celestia was tall to stand out even more than it already did. With every minor jostle of the carriage over otherwise unseen and ignored pebbles and grooves in the road, the mare’s wings shivered and twitched, quite instinctively, but also bringing attention to the rainbow shimmering that seemed to be just buried beneath the pristine white of the feathers and fur. The tail that seemed to flow like a river in the same style as her mane seemed like a logical conclusion to the statement that this creature made with her very presence. As though attempting to enhance the divine nature of the being they were put on, a crown and peytrel made of gold and jewels were draped on her, and while she wore them as familiarly as a pair of old shoes, the mare gave the impression that she’d been alive for longer than the metal and stones had even been in existence, so they seemed more tacked on rather than assign any sense of regality or beauty.

Celestia knew who this was...and hated her on sight.

It was totally irrational, she had never had dealings with this alternate version of herself, at least face to face, but a small, petty part of her not only blamed this pony for Sunset’s plight but also recognized that plain-and-simple-human Celestia would never, ever hold a candle to the power and majesty of this creature.

The human woman had to close her eyes and count to ten in her head before she could look at the mare again. A few deep breathing exercises helped.

She was so going to need a spa trip soon.

And maybe a tequila bender.

Her attempts at flash-meditation were interrupted by Aurora’s motherly voice, “A philosopher once said, ‘Hell is when you meet the person you could have been.’ Don’t let this version of Celestia distract you from what you’re here for, remember that she has reason to be jealous of you, too.” Aurora had to step aside for the carriage to pull up to the door of the candy shop. Apparently even otherworldly mystics didn’t like literally cohabitating spacetime with other objects.

She was just about to ask her guide what Princess Celestia could possibly have to be jealous of a high school principal, when she heard a familiar, if very young voice from inside the carriage. “Umwhu? Pr’cess?”

The princess looked down and lit her horn, a light hum and a glow coming from inside as she pulled up in her magic a little filly with a familiar gold-orange coat and yellow and red main and tail. Her cutiemark was the now familiar sunburst with yin-yang symbolism, and she was letting loose a jaw-cracking yawn and blinking her eyes that just seemed far too large for her head and oh-my-Goddess look at those tiny little hoovesies and I just wanna snuggle her all up and that was Sunset and OMG she’s just so adorable!

Principal Celestia was immediately smitten with the unicorn filly.

“Come, Sunset,” coaxed the princess, “I managed to squeeze in just a tiny bit of free time for us to spend tonight. I brought you to someplace I think you’ll love.”

Tiny little Sunset looked around, and as soon as she clapped eyes on the sweet shop she lost all indications that she’d just been napping in a carriage.

Several minutes later, the filly was bouncing about between the displays as the shopkeeper was practically falling over his hooves in some sort of attempt at obeisance while also retrieving the confections Sunset selected. By all appearances, it looked like it was going to be a marvelous Hearth’s Warming outing. Celestia knew, however, that the magical being that violated causality, space, and time to bring her here would have wasted the trip on a happy but discardable memory, and sure enough after a few minutes of Sunset gushing about the different candies, a pegasus in royal guard armor burst into the shop.

“Your Majesty,” announced the newcomer, the situation that you told us to watch for...it’s happening! Code: Meringue!”

Princess Celestia went from happily watching over Sunset’s antics to alarmed attention in less than a second. “What!? They got past Kibitz?!”

“Yes, ma’am!” replied the soldier.

The equine Celestia rose to her hooves, “Is there time to form a cordon?”

The guard shook his head, “No, ma’am. We don’t have enough specialists to handle all points of ingress. Our scouts lost track of him a little over ten minutes ago.”

Now Princess Celestia looked positively panicked, “Ten minutes!? He could be here any minute…”

The door to the shop opened, and the bell connected to the door rang like a portent of doom...or at least extreme annoyance. Standing in the door was a stallion with a white coat and blue mane. Whatever cutiemark he may have had was covered by a blue and silver coat that had a collar that went up nearly to the stallion’s ears. He had a scowl on his face that could have curdled milk still in the cow.

“Princess Celestia,” began the pony in what had to be the most snooty, most haughty High Canterlot accent the principal had ever heard, even outshining those she heard on the rare times she was exposed to the Crystal Prep steering committee, “I have been trying to meet with you for some time now…”

The pony’s attitude seemed to have popped at least one cork for the princess, “Duke Blueblood,” she interrupted, “We just met six hours ago and I made my positions on every matter you have brought before me since I put my hoof down with you yesterday.” The words came out in a huff that the principal didn’t think the princess would even be capable of.

Duke Blueblood sniffed, “Indeed, and I find those positions just as inexcusable now as I did then. If you would just listen to reason like a good mare…”

Whatever magical force caused the princess’s mane and tail to wave like they had their own dramatic breeze started to billow like a storm was brewing. “Blueblood, if you finish that sentence I will find a way to strip your house of it’s titles and lands and ensure you are only capable of being hired as a maid in the palace, where I shall personally keep an eye on you and ensure you only enjoy the rights and privileges that you deem worthy of ‘a good mare.’”

Okay, that earned the princess at least a few points in the “like” column for Principal Celestia.

At that point the squabbling began in earnest, if quietly. Or at least the princess tried to keep it quiet, Duke Blueblood had no qualms about raising his voice to make his stance known.

Principal Celestia realized that, like the Princess, she had let her attention drift away from Sunset. She looked back to the filly and her heart broke. Sunset was looking up at the princess with pleading eyes, but ones that were obviously far too accustomed to seeing this very scene. With a sigh, the filly turned back to the confectioner, who himself was showing just as much discomfort at the scene and giving Sunset a sympathetic expression. “Just...that’s all I want, I guess,” said Sunset, “Thank you.”

The human woman lost her cool at that point, she whipped around and took the three steps that separated her from her counterpart and shouted, “PAY ATTENTION TO HER, YOU FAT COW!” in the princess’ face. To her frustration, the other Celestia didn’t react.

The slightly amused tone of an elder observing a temperamental child laced through Aurora’s words as she said, “None of them can see or hear you, my dear. And while the multiverse is large and full of different possibilities, this past is the immutable history that brought Sunset to you. It cannot be changed, only learned from.”

Celestia didn’t respond to the woman directly, just bunched her fists. The other woman gently laid a hand on her shoulder. “Come,” she said with a gentle squeeze, “We have more presents to see before we’re done in this world.”

With a sigh, Celestia turned one last time to see Sunset retrieving the bag of candy from the store owner, turning a hurt look to the still bickering princess, then left the store for the carriage.

An older Sunset was serving herself some punch from a bowl at a long table near one of the balconies on the palace. It was obvious that she was upset, if Celestia had become any judge of magical control in the last few weeks. While the motions of the ladle were precise and fluid, there was just a bit too much force as it moved, causing some of the red beverage to splash out onto the white tablecloth. While Sunset’s eyes were on the cup, her ears were swivelled back to listen to the conversation of three other fillies. Three fillies that, Celestia had observed, were talking in the far-too-loud volumes of those pretending to have a private conversation that’s very clearly intended to be overheard. This was a particularly favorite tactic of at least one clique of mean girls in every class year at the high school, so while the contents of the conversation held some useful information to the principal, it didn’t lessen the emotional pain it was dealing on the past version of her student.

“...so daddy is getting me one of the new Lady Solaris saddles for the Hearth’s Warming ball next week, you know, the one our families are hosting out in the country?”

The other two fillies gasped, “A saddle? How daring!” said one in a sycophantic voice, “And scandalous! I’ve only ever seen a saddle that wasn’t in a store in the ‘grown ups’ section once, and that was when I snuck into mummy’s closet! I know mummy and daddy use it, because they’ve been dropping hints about me being a big sister…” the three giggled, “To think your daddy’s going to let you wear one in public!”

Sunset sighed and dropped the ladle into the punch bowl with a clatter. She levitated the freshly poured cup to her mouth, but didn’t actually bring it in contact with her lips as here eyes took on a distant gaze, clearly looking at nothing, but her muzzle started drifting down as she listened to the trio, her head drooping.

“I know, right? It’s so wonderful to have such a great father, and mum’s excited to see me in it, too, especially since they were able to make my cutecinera the event for all the families with foals in Celestia’s school.”

Hearing her name applied to an entire institution was still a little jarring, even though she’d been hearing it all night since Aurora had brought them here. It was, after all, a “junior gala” held for the students of said school before they all left for the holidays. It was thanks to one of those quirks of the calendar that left the last day of the school session on the Friday before the holiday, and the staff had taken advantage of Hearth’s Warming Eve happening before their charges left for vacation.

One of the filly’s conspirators lept on the conversational opportunity they’d apparently been waiting for, “Do you think Sunset Shimmer has any home to go to? I mean, wasn’t she an orphan when the Princess found her?”

The leader of the trio smiled wickedly, “Oh, of course she doesn’t. Daddy’s servants reported that she hangs on to Celestia’s tail whenever school isn’t in. It’s like she thinks Princess Celestia is her mother!” the other two cackled wickedly as Principal Celestia watched Sunset’s ears droop. She had a feeling that the group of mean fillies were probably more on the mark than they suspected. The girl was continuing, “As if the Princess would stoop to adopting an orphan when she has so many responsibilities.”

The plastic cup in Sunset’s magical grip collapsed in on itself. Before a mess could be made, Sunset’s magic caught the liquid and held it in a spherical blob. The filly muttered an, “Excuse me,” under her breath to nobody in particular and quickly trotted to the door, dumping the floating punch in a potted plant and depositing the shards of the shattered cup on the tray of a convenient waiter as she moved.

As Sunset fled out a door, Celestia realized she was holding a hand up, as though to call out to Sunset and summon her back.

A commotion at the main entrance caught her attention, however. She realized that her counterpart had arrived. As the princess entered the room and began greetings to the students and staff in attendance, the principal watched Princess Celestia as the equine’s eyes flitted around the room. Tall she may have been, her gaze couldn’t take in everything at once, and her attempts at polite greetings of all those who sought her attention meant that she had to repeatedly look at the same areas of the ballroom to ensure she had seen everything. The principal could almost see the moment when the light of hope and true interest in the party faded to disappointment and indifference. The smiling mask that was the rest of the princess’ face remained the same cheerful countenance as before, but she clearly was just going through the motions.

Looking for Sunset, huh? Thought Principal Celestia, Why couldn’t you have come in five minutes earlier, you...you...nag? You might have been able to show Sunset she wasn’t alone!

She felt Aurora’s hand on her elbow, and she breathed a few times to settle her heart. Celestia swiped a hand under an eye and was somewhat surprised to see a hint of wetness. “The past is hard to watch, especially when one sees the mistakes in another that you’ve already learned from. Princess Celestia would always come to every Hearth’s Warming gala and ball the school held, not realizing that this was the last one Sunset attended. And Sunset would never hear that she had missed the princess at the party, because Celestia was always too quick to decide that it would be best to remain quiet than to say something that might antagonize someone.”

Principal Celestia walked out into the hallway outside the ballroom, almost absently looking for Sunset and not being surprised when she didn’t see the filly. “Educators that deal every day with kids don’t have the luxury of being diplomatic sometimes. Especially with cases of bullying or neglect.” She hung her head and clasped her hands in front of her chest, lost in a memory.

Aurora let her have a moment, then said, “We have much more to see; come young Celestia.”

This Hearth’s Warming was apparently several years after the previous, with Sunset now showing the long, lanky legs of an adolescent pony in the throes of a growth spurt. Probably getting pretty close to graduation… thought the Principal. The filly who would one day be a girl was dressed in holiday-themed formal wear and attending a ball. This one was obviously diplomatic in nature. She was scowling into a cup of some form of mulled cider while at Celestia’s side. The princess, meanwhile, was enjoying a stiff debate with a stag, the deer king vigorously arguing some point of Equestrian politics with a smile on his face and standing just a bit too close to the princess for propriety’s sake. The king’s wife, smiling and seemingly flirting with Celestia as well, was occasionally bouncing a small bundled form on her back, a faun fast asleep and also decked out in an adorable deer-fitted onesie that had bunny ears popping up from the hood.

It was the presence of the faun that gave one of the few indications that this was supposed to be some form of informal gathering. The palace staff had apparently taken what was supposed to be a friendly gathering of some of the continent’s national leaders of allied countries and turned it into a very stiff, formal affair.

This was the first time that Principal Celestia saw anything like the rebellious streak that she kept under wraps around her students in her counterpart. As the party started nearly a half hour previous, Princess Celestia saw the trimmings all around her of fussy hors d'oeuvres and century-old glassware and immediately teleported her royal regalia off her person and just as quickly zapped in her faded pink bathrobe (with a pocket obviously missing on the right breast) and four ridiculously oversized bunny slippers. Principal Celestia giggled where her counterpart simply smiled serenely as the wait staff suffered varying degrees of shock. She thought she actually saw a monocle pop on one of the waiters near the back of the room.

Sunset, for her part, simply frowned at the display and trotted along side her mentor as the grandiose entrance wore on, conversation only slowly returning to normal after that.

And so it was that half an hour later, Sunset was growing more and more frustrated with the princess’ obvious flirtation with the other two national leaders.

Principal Celestia was blushing rather fiercely. “...please tell me that we’re not going to follow them after the party!” she squeaked.

Her guide uttered a matronly chuckle, “Oh, no. They’re not the focus.”

As if to underscore the otherworldly woman’s statement, Sunset chose that moment to slurp, very loudly, the last of her cider. “Well, princess, if I’m not needed any longer, I’m going to my room to study. Thesis on teleportation matrices don’t write themselves, after all.”

The conversation between the heads of state lurched to a halt as the three stared at Sunset. The teen took that as her cue to leave and turned abruptly. She got about three strides, depositing her empty mug on the tray of a passing waiter as she walked, before the princess muttered an apology to the two deer and hastened after Sunset.

As the two humanoids followed, the equine Celestia said in a quiet voice, “Sunset, that was rude. Come back and enjoy the party. We hardly see each other enough as it is without a book or one of your assignments between us.”

A nickering snort erupted from Sunset as she marched on, not looking at the princess, “And? These parties aren’t about us spending time together. They’re about you spending time with everyone else. Just once I…” Principal Celestia recognized the rapid blinking the filly was doing, it usually preceded a fresh bout of tears from the teenager she took into her home.

“‘Just once,’ what? Sunset?” asked the princess. Finally… groused the principal mentally. “What do you want?”

Sunset ground her teeth, an unshed tears threatening to fall as she sniffed, “No, don’t worry about it. Just have Kibitz deliver my customary gift under the tree. I’ll be there tomorrow morning to open it. You’ll be there just like every year after one of these; you’re going to finally condescend to drink enough to get just a little tipsy, because of course getting drunk wouldn’t be ‘lady-like’ or ‘proper,’” Sunset was building up a head of steam now, “And you’ll take someone back to your quarters and do things you think I don’t know about with them and then sometimes forget to shower before meeting me for opening presents,” this time both Celestia’s blushed hard enough to turn them nearly completely pink, “And we’ll spend all of fifteen minutes together PRETENDING to be normal, then one of the staff, probably Kibitz because everyone knows you never bitch at him for interrupting anything that doesn’t resemble ‘princessly duty,’” said stallion was actually approaching the two from behind, coincidentally parallel to the two spectral visitors. When Sunset made her observation, he flinched and had the decency to back away. Sunset, oblivious to this, continued her rant, “And that’ll be that. So let’s just pretend that everything before and after doesn’t have anything to do with that tiny little piece of the year that you seem to think makes up for the rest of the year...just like you ALWAYS DO!” The last two words drew the attention of numerous party-goers, but the two mares didn’t even notice.

Princess Celestia stumbled to a halt in shock. Whatever she thought the conversation would involve obviously hadn’t been that. Attempting to muster something resembling her usual royal bearing, she drew herself up. “Young lady, get back here!” she snapped at her protege.

Sunset still wasn’t looking anywhere except straight ahead, “You’re not my mother!” she snapped back.

The look on Princess Celestia’s face was one of pure devastation. Principal Celestia could tell the mare was fighting tears as she simply stood stock-still looking to the place where Sunset had been. Moments later, a blinding flash filled the room, and when she blinked her vision back to normal, the principal could see no sign of the princess in the room.

Things were really interesting when a new pink alicorn showed up.

“I AM NOT SPENDING MY HEARTH’S WARMING WITH HER!!!” the young orange mare bellowed right in the face of an exasperated pony version of Cadance.

Principal Celestia, for her part, was giggling fit to burst. While clearly a far more statuesque pony than the average (not to mention larger than nearly all others besides Celestia herself), this version of Cadance was just as cute and cuddly and adorable as all the other ponies in this odd mirror-image world. If she could ever find a way to tell her friend about pony-world, she was so going to spread the grief she’d been ‘suffering’ by being referred to as royalty since Princess Sparkle visited.

Princess Celestia was giving Sunset her best Stern Glaretm and sighing heavily, “Sunset! That is no way to speak to…”

Sunset stomped with both front hooves in a purely pony expression of frustration, “No! You wanna drag in some country bumpkin who barely knows what indoor plumbing is?! Fine! I can’t stop you, you’re the princess! You wanna make her…” and she openly seethed for a moment, “A princess, well, she’s a bucking alicorn, so WHY NOT?! THEN you adopt her into your family!” Sunset’s voice gained a very hard edge with that sentence, “Something we don’t even have RECORDS of because you predate the end of the Discordian Era, so sure, let’s just stick her name in with some krazy glue! Forget the FACT that PRINCESS CELESTIA doesn’t...adopt...anypony!”

Sunset’s rib cage was heaving by this point, and not with anger. Principal Celestia was no longer giggling. Cadance was slowly backing away, her own eyes threatening to brim with tears and her ears flat back, and Princess Celestia appearing about fifteen forms of miserable.

Sunset swallowed three times before finally being able to speak, “So no, I’m refusing now to be part of your pretend family. Go...go play house with your new playmate somewhere else, just so long as it’s not anywhere near me!” So saying, she stomped out of the room, which the spectral principal noted was Sunset’s own room.

Several heavy moments of silence passed before the pink mare hesitantly spoke, “...auntie…”

“No, Cadance,” the sun princess interrupted, “This is not your fault...it’s mine. I’ll...see if I can fix things with her when she’s cooled down some. For now, let’s go...somewhere else.” So saying, she stood and left the room, Cadance trotting after.

They visited other Hearth’s Warmings Eves, of course, but they were often more of the same. Sunset would enter the day in an increasingly foul temper as the years wore on, an event would be offered or gifts to be exchanged would be presented, bickering would ensue (often turning into full-blown arguments, especially as Sunset grew closer to being an adult), and the night would end in harsh words or tears.

And then, suddenly, they were back in Principal Celestia’s world, and in the old abandoned factory, and Sunset was a very young human woman, physically appearing to be no more than fourteen or fifteen years old.

Whatever Sunset had done after passing through the portal, she’d made herself a small place of her own. While not homey, per se, the office room in the factory had a cot with a worn out camping mattress and sleeping bag that had seen better days. A camp stove was set up and warming a small saucepan of vegetable stew, filling the air with a hint of scents that merely suggested at the possibility of a memory of a more homely environment. A trashbag had been duct-taped to the window to act as blackout curtains, and a flashlight that could be used as a table lantern sat on a small, scratched up coffee table. Young Sunset had pulled the table over to the cot, using the bed as a seat as she waited with an empty bowl and spoon for what must be her Hearth’s Warming dinner.

The scene broke Celestia’s heart all over again, making her think of the night she and her sister had followed the girl back here, suddenly wishing with all her heart that she could swoop in and collect this younger version of her student, take her back to her home, and show her how a proper family…

She stopped her train of thought before it could go any further.

To distract her thoughts, she paid more attention to the radio, “...and on our Hearth’s Warming special tonight, we’re going to talk about the greatest and truest form of love, the love you have for your family. I may be your ‘princess of love,’ my Canterlot sweeties, but love isn’t just about the flutter of your heart as you gaze at your paramour...it’s also about the most wonderful part that comes next. This is going out to all you mothers and fathers out there, and in honor of all you do for your kids all year round…” the voice was silenced with a ‘click’ as Sunset shut off the small battery powered unit.

Darn it, Cadance, thought Celestia, Of all the topics for Sunset’s first Hearth’s Warming in the human world… but then she couldn’t blame her friend. She really had loved her job as a radio D.J., but after she had completed her teaching certificate she couldn’t stay away from her true love of teaching. If Celestia guessed the year right, this had been Cadance’s final Hearth’s Warming performance before quitting the radio business the next summer to start teaching at Crystal Prep.

Sunset sat in the otherwise empty, silent room, waiting for her food. After long enough that Celestia was about to ask Aurora why they were still watching the scene, Sunset finally moved. She turned her head to the corner, where a shelf held a few books. Mostly textbooks, but Celestia recognized the communication journal. For a moment, Sunset had a wistful expression on her face, and as though she were afraid that if she thought any longer on it she’d change her mind, she rushed over to the journal, grabbed a pen from her backpack, then sat down on the cot again, this time with the journal open on her lap and getting ready to write. She put the tip of the pen down...and paused. Principal Celestia knew that Sunset wasn’t going to write anything in this moment, as this happened in the past and she had seen the journal, and there was nothing there, but that didn’t stop her from holding her breath, hoping against hope that Sunset would reach out to the princess.

Of course, nearly a minute later, Sunset lifted the pen, gently closed the book, then set them aside on the coffee table.

The ache in Celestia’s chest was completely irrational, but she supposed the heart didn’t understand time travel.

There was only a couple more Hearth’s Warmings spent in the factory, both were similar, lonely affairs. Neither time did Sunset even touch the journal, and the last year before the Fall Formal the journal wasn’t even present in the office. She must have taken it to the school and left it in her locker by this point, thought Celestia.

Abruptly, she was back in her living room, the decorated tree glittering cozily in the corner as she struggled to re-orient herself in space and time. Curious, she glanced wordlessly at Aurora.

“Your time with me is nearly up, young Celestia. But fret not, the story isn’t over, and your Hearth’s Warming gift will outshine any that she has ever received before. You just need to find it. For that, my sisters will help better than I can, as my realm is only the gifts already given.”

Celestia glanced at the clock, a positively ancient time piece that had once belonged to her parents that Luna had insisted on restoring once she got out of juvenile hall. She saw that they still had a little over a minute until they had left at midnight.

“The princess...did she really care for Sunset?”

Aurora’s motherly gaze softened considerably, “More than you might ever know, she was merely faced with a foe that she had never experienced, and therefore was unable to marshal defences or even define the battle plan...motherhood.”

Celestia started in shock at the statement the very moment the clock struck midnight...again. Before her eyes, Aurora seemed to shimmer and fade, the sparks flying swiftly off her form briefly taking the form of a floating, pony-sized reindeer that still held that enigmatic smile until it faded, cheshire cat-like, completely away.

“Wait!” blurted Celestia, “What do you mean, ‘motherhood?’” Realizing she had spoken too late to even think about getting a response, she sighed and lowered her hands, which she only belatedly realized were outstretched as though to grab the ethereal being. She must have meant that Princess Celestia needed to raise Sunset like a daughter...surely she’s not just saying ‘motherhood’ to tweak my nose because everyone seems to be pushing me to make Sunset my daughter…

Her train of thought was interrupted by some scolding tutting that had a humorous undertone, “Tsk, tsk, Celestia, you got your sister the FS4 version of Grogar Might Weep? She’s told you dozens of times she has a HexBox.”