Sunset Shimmer, queen bitch turned demonic overlord of Canterlot High, never got tired of winning
No matter how many times she overcame an obstacle, how many times she made the honor roll, or was crowned prom princess, she still relished the triumphant burst of energy. It was like candy for the soul.
As she looked over the petrified forms of the six girls who’d caused her so much trouble these past few days, that feeling was enhanced a thousandfold.
The Princess-turned lawn ornament and her concrete cohorts just stood there, each preserved for posterity. The “Princess” was forever frozen in a look of defiance. The Kentucky-fried Hick and her lesbian lover were frozen in mid-lunge as if they’d tried to land a punch in the microseconds before they were petrified. The bunny-loving coward had covered her face with her eyes, apparently thinking “if I can’t see it, can’t hurt me.” Little Miss Stuck Up had her arms crossed, face frozen in a look of contempt, while the Pink Spazz was frozen in a perpetual shrug with a face that said “Oh well, that’s life.”
“Pathetic,” Sunset flicked Twilight’s petrified nose with a talon. She licked her newly-grown fangs, flaring her leathery wings. “What were you going to do, smother me with a group hug? Kiss me to death? Heh heh heh... hah hah hah…”
This was it, the moment she’d been waiting for for months.
Pumping her wings, Sunset launched herself into the air. She threw her head back...
“BWAHAHAHAHA!!!“
She cackled, summoning some lightning for dramatic effect. This evil laugh had been months in the making. Months of studying cheesy sci-fi movies. Months of practicing in front of her bathroom mirror, training her diaphragm, ensuring that perfect balance of sinister, maniacal, and triumphant. Months of complaints from the neighbors.
All worth it.
“Heh heh heh…Hey, Snails, check this out!”
Sunset looked to see her minions, Snips and Snails, using their newly-gained demon powers to levitate Principal Celestia and Principal Luna. Clumsily, they mashed the two women’s faces together.
“Now kiss!” Said Snails, giggling like an idiot.
“Snips, Snails!”
The two demonic dimwits dropped their zombified principals. “Uh, yeah?” Said Snails.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Uh, like, nothing?” Snails said, flapping his newly-gained wings, tail twitching.
Sunset groaned and facepalmed. You’d think being infused with unholy power would’ve made them smarter .“Stop screwing around and get ready,” She rubbed her talons together, a sinister smile spreading across her face. “I have a new throne to claim.”
Pumping her leathery wings, Sunset launched herself into the air, inspecting her new army of the sorta-damned. She clapped her hands, and the attendees of Canterlot High’s Fall Formal stood at attention, eyes glowing with a baleful light, their faces completely blank, sometimes voicing a request for brains.
Occasionally, bits of their original personalities broke through. One girl, lime green with orange dreadlocks, kept mumbling “bran...bran...”. Another, a cranberry-colored girl, kept mumbling “In your head….” over and over again.
Her inspection complete, Sunset touched down in front of the equestrian statue in front of the school, the point where two worlds kissed. She took a step towards it, then stopped. Now that she thought about it, the Crystal Empire was a long way from Canterlot. Getting there would take time.
Besides, why walk when she could warp?
Closing her eyes, Sunset raised the alien appendages she had been stuck with for the past few years and channeled magic through her body. Raw, primordial energy flowed out of the hexed hair accessory, interfaced with the spell, and tore spacetime a new one.
“Heh heh, heh heh, cool!” Said Snips.
Sunset ignored her acolytes and focused on the portal.
Light pooled into a perfect circle at the statue’s base; a puddle of glue spilled onto the fabric of reality. Shapes started to form from the milky pool. Sunset rubbed her hands together in anticipation. Her evil smile grew even wider.
This was it. All these years she was….
The pool turned transparent. The smile vanished from Sunset’s face.
“What…?”
When the portal cleared, she didn’t see the gaudy, elaborately decorated throne room of Canterlot Castle, but a sterile, brutalist office made out of grey stone. All around, workers dressed in outdated office attire dangled over their desks like puppets, chanting some nonsensical incantation.
As she watched in disbelief, Sunset became aware of faint hissing noises, like a slow leak on a tire. As if just noticing her, the noise suddenly grew louder. Boring into her skull. Crowding out her thoughts.
Quickly, Sunset slammed the portal shut. She rubbed her head, blood trickling from her ears. Whatever that place was, it was totally out of control.
Once she recovered, Sunset picked herself up, leaning against the statue, catching her breath. She was just...just getting used to using the crown, that was all. A foal taking its first steps. Nothing to worry about.
Once again, Sunset channeled magic into her body and ripped open spacetime.
No dice. This time, the portal showed a dimly-lit garage partly turned into a laboratory. In a corner, a teenage boy and an elderly man in a lab coat studied something on a monitor
The kid turned around and froze.
“Uh, Rick…” He said, tugging on the man’s sleeve.
The man turned around. “Holy crap, M-Morty,” He said, belching loudly. Sunset caught a whiff of cheap booze and nihilism. “We’re cameos in an Equestria Girls Fanfic!”
Reaching into his lab coat, the old man whipped out a gadget uncomfortably similar to a Sci-Fi Ray Gun. Before he could squeeze the trigger, Sunset instantly slammed the portal shut, like a teenager accidentally catching their mother dressing.
Just another little setback. I...I’m just starting to get the hang of this. With that comforting thought, she focused and opened yet another portal.
This time, when the fog cleared, the teen found herself staring at a near-exact duplicate of the school grounds. In front of the statue was a girl who was nearly a perfect copy of herself, albeit a slighter darker skin color, who was also staring into a portal. Beyond that portal was another Sunset, this one with strange, fleshy tendrils instead of hair. Beyond that portal was another, and another, and another. An infinitely long tunnel of Sunsets staring into portals, mirroring her every move exactly.
Curious, Sunset turned around and, sure enough, just a few meters behind her was a male version of herself staring through a portal.
“Weird.” Said Sunset. Instantly, her uncountably infinite brothers and sisters repeated her words. Some sounded nearly identical to her own, albeit with different emphasis on vowels, pronouncing it as “Wayrd” or “Werd”. Others were completely unintelligible, speaking in alien languages or accents so thick they might as well have been.
Growling, Sunset slammed the portal shut and gave the crown a solid whack. “Work, you hunk of scrap!” Pressing the ornament firmly against her scalp, the bitch who would be queen cursed, and tried again. And again. And Again. World after world appeared before her: a fleabag hotel filled with a dream-like haze; a featureless, off-white room containing nothing but a large bull moose and some walnuts; the cold beverages section of some bizarre, extradimensional grocery store. Every reality she could think of and more appeared in front of her... except the one she wanted.
As Sunset flipped through realities like a bored nineties kid flipping through tv channels, waiting for Netflix to be invented, Snips and Snails kept screwing around.
“Hey, Snips.”
“Heh, Yeah?”
“Watch this!”
Snails snapped his talons. A tiny flame appeared on the tip of his thumb.
“Whoah!”
“Heh, heh, “ Snails cackled. “Fire fire fire!”
Ignoring her minions, Sunset collapsed the portal and tore the crown from her head, holding it in front of her face.
“Listen up, crown,” Sunset growled, grinding her teeth together. “I have a coup d'etat scheduled in a few minutes. Either you start working with me, or I’ll absorb your power and hock what’s left of you at the pawn shop!”
The crown was unmoved.
Sunsight sighed. “Alright, look, let's cut a deal. If you cooperate with me, I promise, once I become Equestria’s new eternal queen, I’ll make sure you get a personal servant and the best jewelry polish money can buy. We have a deal?“
The gem inset in the crown sparkled a little. Was that a “Yes”? She was going to assume it was a “Yes”.
“Right,” Taking a deep breath, Sunset planted the crown back on her head. She crossed her talons “Let’s try this again.”
Once again, spacetime twisted and curled in on itself, and the portal emerged in the middle of Canterlot Castle’s Grand Throne Room™, complete with matching throne, princess, and royal guards.
Yes!
The alicorn started, spitting out the cup of tea she’d been drinking. “Sunset?!”
“Hello, ‘Princess’”. Sunset sauntered through the glowing window in spacetime. The moment she passed the glowing threshold, the spell linking the two worlds kicked into action, The long, lanky biped body turned shorter and squatter. The flat primate face stretched itself out into a blunt muzzle. The flaming hair became a mane cascading down the back of Sunset’s head, accompanied by a flaming red tail. To complete the ensemble, a curlicue horn sprouted from her forehead.
“Ahh, it’s so good to be back on four legs again!” Sunset said, stretching her new limbs.
The moment her hooves touched the floor tiles, Celestia’s guards readied their spears and charged. “For the Princess!” they yelled. Rolling her eyes, Sunset ignited her horn and telekinetically launched the first guard straight into the ceiling, lodging him horn-first in a support beam like a pencil into a ceiling tile. The second guard she swept aside with her leathery wings, sending him flying into a wall.
“Ow...” He said, then slowly slid to the floor.
Before anypony else could react, Sunset slammed the throne room doors shut and sealed them with a spell
Good to see the guards hadn’t changed much.
Leaping from her throne, Celestia flared her wings, took to the air, and unleashed a bolt of golden energy strong enough to blow the top off a mountain. Sunset simply yawned and let the crown harmlessly absorb the blast
“Now, Princess, Is that any way to treat your old student?”
With a thought, chains of solidified magic wrapped themselves around the princess, binding her tightly in a cocoon of pure will. The alicorn thrashed about, muscles bulging, trying to tear herself free, then slumped to the ground in defeat.
“What...have you done with Twilight?” Celestia gasped, panting heavily.
“Your precious lackey? Oh, she’s fine. I already have a place for her in my new kingdom.” Sunset rubbed her chin with a hoof. “I was thinking in the garden, next to the azaleas. As for you, well, I think you’ve been working too hard. You need a vacation.”
Magic swirled around Sunset’s horn, building into a glowing ball of eldritch energy. Reality turned to putty around it. Impossible colors flickered in and out of existence. Time began to run sideways.
Striking the most dramatic pose she could think of, Sunset aimed the sphere directly at Celestia’s head.
“Tell Cerberus I said ‘Hi!’
With that, the pulsing, throbbing orb of doom leaped from her horn... then fizzled out of existence with a “pop”.
What? Sunset charged up another banishment spell and let it loose. Again, it fizzled out, this time with a comical “pbbbt”.
Damnit Crown, we had a deal!
“Having some technical difficulties, are we?” Said Celestia, a sly grin on her face.
“Uh…” Sunset, thought for a second” On... on second thought, why bother with magic when I have my teenage zombie army? ”
Celestia tilted her head. “Come again?”
“Snips, Snails!” Sunset yelled back through the portal.
“Uh, yeah?” Said Snips.
“Get over here!”
“Whatever.” The dimwitted demonic duo stumbled through the portal, instantly morphing into ponies as they did.
Whoa! Said Snips, checking out his new body. “I’m a horse!"
“You look more like an ass to me.” Said Snails.
“Hey!”
“I meant a donkey, buttmunch. Snails noticed the chained-up princess. “Heh heh, hey filly. I Wanna see my fifth leg?”
Sunset facehoofed. A vein popped out on her forehead. “Just...just call in my teenage army.”
“Whatever,” said Snails. He turned towards the portal. “ Hey, get over here and stuff.”
The adolescent army gave an affirmative groan, and strangely, one “Okey Dokey”. Slowly, the possessed pubescents dragged themselves towards the portal. A green kid with glasses, crossed the threshold, instantly morphing into an earth pony stallion. He set a hoof on the stone tile...and promptly fell flat on his face. Groaning, the newly-ponified human tried to stand on his hind legs, only to fall over again and again.
One by one, the student body of Canterlot High filed through the portal. One by one they transformed into ponies. One by one they fell over, helpless as newborn foals.
Ice shot through Sunset’s body. This...wasn’t part of the plan.
Newly-minted earth ponies piled up in a heap around the portal, trying to push themselves up with hands they no longer had. Freshly-baked Pegasi somehow flapped frantically like wounded birds. The few that managed to get airborne lurched drunkenly around the throne room. Crashing into windows. Snagging on chandeliers. Untrained unicorn horns sparked and popped, teleporting the students-turned-zombies-turned-ponies around at random, blasting holes in the walls with bursts of uncontrolled magic.
As her army of the slightly-damned fell apart, Sunset just stood there, twiddling her hooves with a nervous smile on her face.
Celestia raised an eyebrow.
“Eh heh heh heh…” Sunset shifted, tail twitching, ears flicking. She turned to her minions
“Snips! Snails!”
“Yeah, boss?”
“Do something!”
“Like what?”
That...was a good question.
Before she could think of an answer, something slammed into the magically sealed door, rocking it on its hinges. Somepony counted “ one, two, three!”, and there was another impact, causing the doors to bulge inwards. The glowing chains began to buckle and crack.
As if on cue, Celestia let out a blinding burst of magic, burning away her bonds into glowing scraps of light. She brushed herself off, took a few hoofsteps forward, and yanked the crown from Sunset’s head. The look on the alicorn’s face could pierce steel.
Sunset gulped.
So this was what defeat felt like.
