Principal Celestia sat in silence, observing the student in the chair on the other side of her desk. Sunset Shimmer was, by all accounts, a brilliant mind in the body of a 12 year old that should be full of the confidence of a strong, intelligent young lady just about to present for the first time. Instead, the girl held all the bearing of a trapped herd animal, prey attempting to locate the predator hunting it; shoulders hunched, eyes flitting about, unable to remain focussed, muscles tensed. She behaves like an omega around an abusive Alpha…but she’s an Alpha…

This was what brought the girl to her attention. The whole school’s attention, frankly. A little over two weeks prior, a wave of pheromones seemed to blanket the campus, laden with nervousness, fear, confusion, and intense regret mingled with a rage that had clearly simmered. The cloud of pheromones practically tasted red. It had many of her omegas, students and staff included, on edge for three days until the initial “cloud” dissipated. It had since condensed down into the extremely notable presence of the tween girl who was making waves wherever she went. After the initial miasma, she at first left a trail of confidence and authority that were practically locking up the agency of every omega in whatever classroom she entered, but then that started to fade into confusion, and then fear. All the teachers, staff, and Alphas among the student body all confirmed for her; nobody was bullying Sunset, harassing her, or challenged her to dominance contests. Even had the inexplicable fear reaction not been impacting the rest of the student body, every other aspect of the girl’s presence would have caught Celestia’s attention.

Finally, the principal sat forward, resting her elbows on her desk, and locked eyes with the student. Sunset flinched, almost as if struck. Her nostrils flared and the wave of angry fear, almost smelling like three-day-old gym socks left in the boy’s locker room, filled the office. In the corner of her eye, Celestia saw the shadows in the corner of the room shift. Her sister Luna was getting restless, sensing a weakened prey, not the young and undisciplined Alpha that Celestia saw. Best get this underway, she thought. “Miss Shimmer,” she began, opening the file folder in front of her on her desk. “I have plenty of information on you, but what I have raises some…interesting questions that I honestly am not sure how to address.” Sunset was clearly trying to focus on the principal, but her eyes kept darting to the shadowed corner, Luna, dial it down! She thought to herself as she willed her pheromones and dominance to counter the naked predatory hunger of Luna’s presence. Sunset seemed to relax slightly, or at least was able to keep her eyes on Celestia longer.

“You tested-in in the middle of the term, getting advanced placement in literacy, mathematics, and art. Even in the subjects you don’t show clear mastery in, you’ve demonstrated a quick intelligence that absorbs lessons quicker than your peers and a willingness to ask questions for clarification. Your only weak subjects are biology and history, but you’ve caught up with a speed that, if kept up, will likely land you a spot in the Honors program before the year is out.”

She flipped a page, “Academically, you’re an ideal student. You have incredible knowledge, brilliant reasoning, and a desire to learn. But then we get to the non-academic aspects of the student before me and run into…gaps.” Sunset’s eyes dropped, this time not returning to look directly at the principal but instead staring unfocused in the direction of the front edge of Celestia’s desk. The educator sighed and continued, “The phone number provided to contact your parents leads to a disconnected line. Nobody has seen your parents at all, in fact, and while close enough to be overlooked by casual inspection, no two parent-guardian signatures on your intake paperwork match each other. While your overall hygiene is good, your control over your pheromones is worse than an infant’s.” At this, Sunset’s head popped up, a confused expression on the girl’s face. When she didn’t respond beyond that, Celestia continued, “Socialization is poor, to the point that other teachers have a hard time pairing you up with other students. And finally, your home address is vacant.” As she spoke, she flipped through the scant documents in the folder, far fewer than would normally be in a student’s file. “Your previous school is non-existent, your medical records are missing, and there’s no documentation on your second gender.”

The girl in the chair seemed to shrink into herself with every statement, as though each declaration was a verdict pronouncing judgment. The tangy, acidic lemon of shame and confusion and a scent Celestia couldn’t quite identify practically boiled from Sunset by the time Celestia was finished. I’m going to need to air out the room before any other students come in…or their parents…or anyone else, really.

When Sunset remained silent, Celestia sighed and folded her hands together. “We’ve established everything you are not, Sunset Shimmer. You are not here with your parents, you are not legally one of my students.” She leaned forward, “So the question becomes; what are you?” The older Alpha’s emphasis on the word ‘what’ made it clear what she was asking, and from Sunset’s startled gasp and change in posture from protectively curling in on herself to unfolding her body so she could bolt at any moment, the girl knew Celestia had figured out that the younger Alpha wasn’t…quite…human.

A tense silence reigned for a moment, and for a heartbeat, Celestia thought she might need to perform a dominance display to get the girl to provide more information. Sunset’s chest lurched, and for a moment Celestia thought she was preparing to bolt, but then the girl practically folded back in on herself, and a piercing whine of a sob escaped. So quietly Celestia wasn’t sure she would have heard it without her enhanced Alpha senses, the girl said, “I just want to go home…”

In an instant Celestia was out of her chair and around the desk, kneeling down next to Sunset and rubbing her back to comfort her. She glanced up at her sister, who other than repositioning herself to be able to also spring from her seat if necessary, just nodded in acknowledgment. “It’s okay, Sunset, it will be alright. I won’t let anything bad happen to you, I promise.” Short of wrapping her arms around the girl in a hug that was always problematic for young Alphas when receiving them from other Alphas that weren’t their parents, Celestia pulled every soothing, comforting trick in her extensive educator’s playbook.

They held that scene for a couple of minutes, Sunset sobbing, “I wanna go home,” over and over, before the young Alpha managed to regain enough composure to reduce her crying to some tears and sniffling. Celestia plucked a few tissues from the box on her desk and handed them to the girl. “Thanks,” she muttered and wiped at her face, and blew her nose.

As soon as Sunset showed signs of being collected enough, Celestia backed away and resumed her seat behind her desk. Best not to tempt fate and assume the girl’s “inner Alpha” wouldn’t take her proximity as a threat. Sunset sat quietly, still in a slightly defensive posture but with an introspective expression on her face. A few moments later, she finally spoke, “I… I need to tell you something, and it’s going to sound like I’m making it up.” She paused, a slight uptick in the corner of her mouth was the only preamble to reaching down to her backpack, which she had been wearing and taken off when she sat down. She pulled out a fairly large bound book that, to Celestia’s untrained eye, looked to be hand-stitched and glued. On the cover was a yin-yang symbol enveloped in a stylized sun, though the yin-yang was incomplete. It was lacking the tri-lobed knots in the middle of the largest parts of the swirls.

Yet another strange piece to this puzzle, thought Celestia. Her old friend Rain Shine, Alpha of the Kirin pack, had once explained to her the importance of the symbol in acknowledging both the primary and second genders and the balance that they maintained in the lives of humans. Some betas liked to modify the symbol slightly to show voided dots, removing the second gender indicator and replacing it with a representation of aspects of the other primary gender instead, but for Alphas and omegas, the second gender was far too important to remove and betas only altered the symbol as a performative rebellion. What a void in the place of the second gender could possibly mean, Celestia had no idea.

The two adults watched as Sunset opened the book and began writing in it. A journal of some sort, pondered the principal, but why is she…? Before the thought could complete, Sunset closed the book with a light “thump” and reached out to lay it on Celestia’s desk.

“I…hope the companion journal is still with…” Sunset began before waving off the comment, “Let me start from the beginning; I’m… not human. I’m not even from this world.”

Celestia’s brow furrowed and she felt as much as heard her sister lean forward in her chair. The first they’d already guessed, but the second hadn’t even entered their discussions on the matter before calling the girl in. But…I guess it makes sense, she thought, How else would a non-human Alpha appear from nowhere unless she came from…somewhere else? “So you’re an alien?”

Sunset shrugged, “I mean…sorta? I saw some videos on the Internet last week when I went looking for non-human sentient species in this world and saw some of your sci-fi. I’m…not like that. I didn’t come here in a ship or anything, I came through a magic portal.”

A snort from the corner preceded an incredulously asked, “Magic?!” It was the first thing Luna said to the young Alpha.

Sunset glanced furtively at the vice-principal and then down at the journal on Celestia’s desk, as though afraid to make eye contact. “Yeah, magic. It was my major at…” she paused, this time glancing up to look Celestia in the eye briefly before resuming her watch over the book, “...CSGU.”

Major? That’s for upper forms, not high schools…unless she is spectacularly gifted in this other world, she can’t be more than 12! Instead of voicing this, she opted for what appeared to be the easier question, “‘CSGU?’ A…university?”

“No, it’s…Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.”

Luna snorted again, clearly incredulous, and Celestia opened her mouth to respond when suddenly the journal on her desk…vibrated. Both administrators jumped slightly in surprise, and the vibration repeated, accompanied by a throbbing glow as the entire journal began pulsing in soft yellow light.

Some of Sunset’s confidence from the previous week seeped back into her scent as she smirked at Celestia, “Go ahead, open it.” Looking at the girl skeptically, Celestia turned the journal so it faced her right-side-up and opened its pages. It immediately stopped buzzing like a cell phone and the glow dimmed to nothing. “You have to open it to the last entry for it to work fully. If you close it before you do that it’ll start glowing and vibrating again.” A glance up at the girl showed there was a slight smirk on her face. Rather than respond directly, Celestia did as instructed and saw the entry that Celestia guessed was the one Sunset wrote earlier.

“Dear Princess Celestia…”

By this time Luna had stood and stepped over to Celestia’s desk to read over her shoulder. “...what?!” the younger sister reacted for the both of them. Celestia didn’t speak, simply continued reading.

“Please don’t be upset, I’m sorry. I know you will say it’s too late for that, but ~~I really want to go h~~ ~~I messed u~~ the situation has changed significantly and...I acted hastily and didn’t listen to you and now need your help. I know you probably will never let me back into Canterlot and will probably have me escorted from the palace if I ever do show up again, but I’m trapped in another world. I went through the mirror portal and there’s…something wrong. I’m in a strange body and I feel like I’m being watched and I can’t figure out what’s going on. I’ve already been discovered by the local authorities and they’re holding me for questions. I can only hope you kept your journal and that you’re willing to respond, because at this time you may be my only hope.

Your former student,

Sunset Shimmer.”

Just before Celestia read the last sentence, more words started spontaneously appearing below Sunset’s signature line. Celestia read them silently as they appeared on the page.

“Sunset Shimmer-

Where have you been?! The guard has been on high alert looking for you and I had Lieutenant Armor erect a shield just to keep you in Canterlot! I’ve been pacing the floor waiting for word from you. I canceled six diplomatic meetings in the last two weeks!”

There was a pause in the flow of words, giving Celestia and Luna a chance to turn to each other, as though asking if they were both experiencing this. They turned back to the page when the writing resumed.

“You went through the mirror? You’ll be trapped there for 30 moons! We went over this, young filly! I told you not to mess with the mirror, it won’t get you what you think you want, and even if you got what you wanted it wouldn’t be what you hoped! I can’t send anyone over to help you, I don’t know how the mirror works, Starswirl never told me how he made it.”

“Starswirl?” gasped Celestia and looked up at Sunset, “She knew Starswirl the Bearded?! He was a mathematician and philosopher who died…five centuries ago?!” she glanced at Luna, who nodded.

“Closer to six, actually. I substituted for one of the history classes a couple of days ago and he was part of the lesson for the day.”

“Closer to 12…hundred years ago in our world, actually…” Sunset spoke up. “He predated the founding of Equestria.”

Celestia was beginning to feel vertigo. Hoping to find something to ground herself, she glanced back down at the journal and realized that looking for a lifeline in the very thing that cut her worldview adrift may not have been the wisest thing she’d ever done. The message continued;

“I will await your next message, please reply as soon as you can, I don’t want to be that frantically worried about you again.

Yours in friendship,

Princess Celestia”

Principal Celestia settled back in her chair as Luna straightened and examined Sunset as though looking at a particularly interesting new species of lower life form. “Well, I guess we now have a way of contacting her mother.”

Sunset squirmed slightly under Luna’s gaze, “Well, no, I’m...an orphan. I was left at an orphanage as a filly, nobody knows who my parents were.”

This seemed to center Celestia, she glanced up at Luna, who was looking down at her with a similar expression and the scent that Celestia had learned to associate with doubt from her sister. Lilacs and rotting garbage, I hate that scent, thought the elder sister. She noticed Sunset wrinkling her nose at the smell and glancing around, apparently trying to find the source but not looking at Luna. Interesting…

“So you came from, what, a mirror dimension?” asked Celestia.

“Mirror universe, technically, and it’d probably be better to just say ‘parallel,’ ‘cause there are enough differences that it’s not a perfect reflection,” answered Sunset.

“Right, and one of those differences is that I’m an immortal princess who was buddies with the greatest mathematician in centuries and keeps a herd of unicorns at her school.”

“Ah, no.” Sunset blushed, “She’s an alicorn, and we don’t know that alicorns are really immortal, but they don’t seem to die of old age, and she was Starswirl’s student. And the ‘for unicorns’ is just a name these days. They have programs for weather magic and about ten years ago started a college for earth pony magical studies.”

Something in the way Sunset clarified the statement caused a ‘click’ of understanding. “...are your people even humanoid?” she almost, but not quite, stammered.

Sunset looked every inch the awkward pre-teen as she clasped her hands between her knees and hunched over, as though fearing reprisal for her answer. She shook her head and said, “No, we’re equines sapiens…ponies, specifically.” As she spoke, she began rocking slightly, nerves on display as her eyes flitted around the room instinctually.

Luna’s eyebrows shot up. “Ponies? Little horses? And…you were a pony? How did you become a human?” The somewhat rancid smell of lilacs and decaying food waste rolled off her, this time Sunset practically flinched back, her nose wrinkling. Sunset’s eyes teared up and the girl’s own scent of grassy fields after a rainstorm was overpowered by the sour smell of rancid oil, the scent Celestia had determined was Sunset’s expression of nervous confusion mixed with fear of some sort.

The girl hugged herself and started hunching in again as Luna’s pheromones flooded the room. In that moment, Celestia decided to try a blind test; she exerted her mental control and nearly completely smothered her own pheromone production and muted her Alpha dominance as much as possible. Luna noticed and glanced down at her sister, Celestia just gave the slightest shake of her head and subtly raised a finger to indicate Luna shouldn’t say anything. In the absence of Celestia’s influence, the room became almost oppressive with Luna’s scent.

Sunset abruptly whimpered and curled in on herself. The subtle rocking became shivering as she clapped her hands over her ears and buried her face in her arms. “No…no…no…I wanna go home…no…”

Celestia reached up to clasp her sister’s wrist without looking away from Sunset, though she didn’t need to. Luna’s suspicion finally gave way for concern, and the rancid trash smell was swiftly replaced with the soft, slightly sweet smell of brown sugar baked into cookies. Slowly, Sunset calmed, the muttering and whining being replaced with quiet sobbing.

Celestia released her sister’s arm, again without looking away from Sunset, and asked, “Sunset, have you had these…reactions often since you came to this world?”

“Yes,” sobbed the girl, voice muffled from her face still being buried in her arms, “It…it gets really bad in P.E. or in a test, I feel like I’m surrounded like I can’t get away and everyone’s pressed against me and I just want to be left alone and I can’t get away and I want to hit someone and bite them and…” her whole frame shuddered.

Sunset’s reaction was running its course, the girl’s rocking and shaking finally settling down. Celestia let her own pheromones loose and called up her inner Alpha to assert comfort and reassurance. The girl instantly stilled and began to uncurl, even Luna’s posture softened, leaning gently in the direction of her sister. Luna had told Celestia it smelled like cinnamon and allspice baked into a pie during Harvest Festival to her.

“Sunset…” Celestia began, “Do…ponies…have Alphas?”

The girl’s head popped up, tears staining her face and pure confusion rolling off her, “Alphas…what? What does that mean?”

“Alphas, that’s what you are…do you know what betas are?” Celestia asked. Sunset shook her head again, “Omegas?” another, highly confused denial of understanding.

This time the look shared by Celestia and Luna was deeper and carried more meaning, both sisters frowning visibly and concern wafting off them like spring rain. The principal stretched an arm across her desk to the desk phone and pushed a button, “Raven, can you please reschedule my appointments to clear my afternoon? Luna will take any that absolutely can’t wait.”

Her secretary’s voice came through the phone, “Certainly. Will I need to contact the steam cleaners to do a deep clean? There’s been more drama wafting under the door than the last time Diamond Tiara earned herself detention by getting into a fight with Trixie.”

Celestia chuffed in irritation even as Luna chuckled. Sunset seemed just as confused by the secretary’s response, but smiled and smelled a bit of…cherry pie? Thought Celestia, what in the world could that scent indicate? “No, Raven…actually, yes, it might be a good idea, but have them bill my private accounts instead of the school’s. I think…I think we’ll need discretion with this one.”

Raven didn’t hesitate, her tone losing its playful tease, “Of course. I’ll use my cell phone for the call, then.”

“Thank you, Raven,” Celestia responded before releasing the button. She turned to her sister, “Luna, can you go to the cafeteria and get Sunset’s lunch and a cup of hot water for me, then stop by the nurse’s office and ask Redheart to bring a vapor inhaler and…” she turned to Sunset with a sigh, “And her ‘runaway’ kit.”

Author's Note

While I am fairly new to the whole Omegaverse "scene," I've been reading similar works since the mid- to late-80s (Yes, even the erotic kind...you'd be shocked what makes it through into public libraries), so finding my first Omegaverse fic (ironically also my first NEW Ranmafic in nearly 10 years) was like old home week. I barely needed the primer built into the plot to understand the meme, and when I realized the "omegaverse" tag I'd been seeing scattered about the Internet like slightly perverse apple seeds was the same thing as what I was reading in the (very enjoyable) Ranmafic, I went hunting for more. I think I binged about 10 full fics and 12 incomplete fics from a whole variety of fandoms, some of which I was pleasantly surprised to see had a connection to the Omegaverse, but then, fandoms have been producing crazy things that Should Not Be (but somehow are awesome!) since before I was born.

I've had to do some world-building because I've noticed there is a lack of writing to cover certain subjects as they fit into the omegaverse, but I've done my best to make the lore I've introduced fit perfectly.

FYI, I'll be adding more tags as I add chapters. I don't want to spoil things.

This chapter wound up containing less than I planned but flowed so perfectly I only had to do a little touch-up to get it into a comfortably publishable form. Huge thanks to my new friends on The Omegaverse Discord server! You all made my welcome into the omegaverse a wonderfully joyful experience!