From the beginning, you know the end. When the principal calls you to their office, you know what she's going to say. Maybe Principal Luna wants to warn you about your bullying again. Maybe Principal Celestia wants to try once more to convince you to tutor one of the younger students. But the topics are always the same.
Except this time...they know what you are. This time, you didn't just make a girl cry for daring to say your jacket was "so last season." This time, you blew up half the school and almost zombified it's entire student body.
There's only one reason why they would want to talk to you after all that. Expulsion would be merciful, too merciful after all what you tried to do, after the thing they both saw you turn into. No, there's a call to the local sheriff coming your way and a nice cold cell waiting for you at the county jail. You're pretty sure they can't charge you with using magic, but they aren't going to just forget about the thousands of dollars of property damage you just caused.
They definitely aren't going to let you to hang around here and threaten their precious students like Princess Twilight assumed. The human world doesn't work like that.
You tell yourself it's better this way. The place that you've called home for the past years has been made hostile and you've got no one but yourself to blame. You just wish they would get it over with and walk you to the guillotine. Your back is still stinging from your "apotheosis" and sitting for so long is aggravating the wound.
The door opens and Twilight's friends file out, having just finished telling their part of the story. They give you strange looks, a mixture of hopeful and disappointed. Why do they have to be so nice? This would so much be easier if they hated you like everyone else.
Behind them stands Luna. Arms folded, face like stone. You've heard other students talk about how intimidating she can be, but you never felt the threat, not until now.
You silently thank her, when she waits for Twilight's friends are out of earshot before she calls you in.
The bell rings. The students flood out. A technicolor tangle of young bodies itching for release, all grasping at their most hidden desires, all buried beneath a mountain of convention.
You cut through the mass. Top dog, alpha bitch, valedictorian and fall formal queen for the past three years in a row. You sift through the sea of nameless nobodies; the golden goddess they are all are too terrified to look in the eye. This is your kingdom.
You pause on the steps and give Sentry a quick peck on the cheek to keep up appearances. Silently, you celebrate that he doesn't ask you to come over again. If you have to listen to his shitty band one more time you might set fire to his guitar.
He hasn't wanted to be intimate yet (thank fuck), but you can tell he's getting impatient. But with himself, not you. Like most teenage boys, he's too egotistical to realize what's happening in front of him and too insecure to fight for what he really wants. Which makes him the perfect piece of candy to hang off your arm and make all the other girls jealous, because it means he'll never give you headache trying to think for himself.
With any luck he'll won't ask for you to put out before the moons next align. Years of waiting for the elements to be uncovered and re-activated are finally paying off and the thought of stooping to replicate the reproductive practices of this degenerate race makes swallowing glass sound like fun.
He says he wants to meet your parents. He thinks he wants to get to know you better. You try not to roll your eyes. You have enough to worry about without trying to manufacture a fake family to introduce him to.
You give him the same trite excuses as always, put on a show of how much you love him and then quickly vanish into the crowd.
"So...you are from another dimension?" Celestia is taking this better than you thought she would. Perhaps she and Luna aren't as oblivious as you always thought? Perhaps the two of them had their own encounters with the mirror in the statue when they were young...?
You sit up. "Yes. One with magic."
You didn't realize until this moment that you'd miss this place. You came here to spy on this version of Celestia. And to better assimilate with the locals so that you could convert them to your cause. But you are going to miss its classes, its chances to learn about a world so spectacularly distinct from your own. You didn't realize until this moment, that you'd been taking it for granted.
"And Twilight was from there as well?"
"Yes."
They share a look and then it's Luna's turn to ask a question. "You two are the only two creatures who have come through this portal?"
"Uh, that I know of...sorry, the portal has been around for a while." You struggle to recall what the Other Celestia had said when she first showed it to you. "But no other poni-I mean people came with me when I went through...if that's what you're asking."
Another strange exchange of glances. Why don't they just get it over with and tell you what they are planning to do with you?
Celestia stands up and takes a deep breath. Then the anger in her voice fades, replaced with something else. Something unbearably familiar.
Concern.
"Sunset...where are your parents?"
From the beginning, you know the end. Every few years, Princess Celestia chooses a new student to mentor. They usually don't last more than year. They're usually too dumb to understand the equations or too willing to abuse their newfound position. Despite her best efforts, she can't shape them into a worthy successor, and she gives up.
You were supposed to be different though.
Plucked out of obscurity. Chosen because you were the best of the best. You had to be. The other students at the School For Gifted Unicorns didn't understand. Neither did the teachers.
None of them knew what it was like to have no pony. Waiting to be picked and knowing that you never would be because you just weren't good enough.
You learned everything you could about magic at that blasted school. You knew the Elements of Harmony were the key to ascending to alicornhood. And when they caught you in the restricted section of the library, you thought you'd be expelled.
Instead, Celestia asked if you were interested in becoming her student.
You left behind nothing, an undecorated dormitory for your own castle tower.
You were so close too. But you missed the mark. You weren't "nice" enough. You weren't eager enough to turn a blind eye to your mentor's inadequacies and accept her lies.
She thought she could shut you out. Show you a sliver of real power and then banish you from her castle. She underestimated you and for that she would pay. The mirror offered a chance to learn unimpeded by her interference.
You knew Celestia wouldn't follow you. She was too devoted to her little ponies to go galivanting into an unknown world just because of you. And when your hunch proved correct, it only confirmed what you'd always suspected.
"I don't...the Celestia from my world...she was my adopted mother. But...I don't have any parents...here." She shifted in her seat. "I actually hacked into the school's system to make you think I was enrolled here."
"You have been alone...fending for yourself, all this time?" Luna asks.
You sit up. The last thing you want right now is their pity. "It's not a big deal. I would be considered an adult by now in my world anyway."
Celestia steps over and reaches out for your shoulder.
You flinch away.
Then she speaks and the ice starts to form in your chest. "...Where have you been living, Sunset?"
School is out. And none of them, the students you pass every day in its halls, the ones so terrified and enchanted by the mystery which you brought here, know the truth.
Across the parking lot of Canterlot High, on the other side of the highway, in the shade of a big tree. In a tent that is frequently damp and always dirtier than you would prefer.
That's where Sunset Shimmer lives.
Sometimes when you're going to the bathroom out here, you hear the rustle of a clumsy squirrel, and you panic at the thought another a human might have stumbled across your camp. Worse are the times when it storms so hard that the mattress you salvaged from the dump becomes saturated and sleep becomes impossible. Those times, you lay awake all night missing the perfectly climated comforts of Canterlot Castle and secretly wonder if Celestia was right.
You try not to think about the overcast above as you strip out of your school clothes, the ones you received from the mirror when you first entered this world and slip into the ones you stole. Once you've finished carefully washing your "uniform" in nearby creek you eat the food you saved from the cafeteria and count how much lunch money Snips and Snails collected for you today. On weekends you'll use the local laundromat. But only after dark, when you don't have to worry about anyone from school asking questions about why it you don't have a washing machine at home.
Tonight, you make a little fire, and you watch the skies change color, waiting a moment for the moon to come out, so you can check off the completion of another lunar cycle.
Only one more month before the portal re-opens.
There must be some temporal distortion between this world and Equestria. Time passes faster there than it does here, and you sometimes worry that when the portal is re-opened, you will return to an alien future, one in which even your mentor has been forgotten.
You try to keep those ideas confined to your mental basement. But sometimes the loneliness becomes too much and even the inevitable day of your ascension feels like it will never come.
A moth lands on the edge of the firepit, drawn out of the vast dark by the promise of heat. You hold out your hand and allow it to investigate your palm, searching for the pheromones of its future lover. As larvae, it gorged itself on the most tasteless and easily acquired meals it could, until it was too obese to do anything but sleep. Then out of its beautiful pupae it rose, a dull winged creature, flitting insipidly between flowers, and feeding on only the most saccharine nectar.
Waiting to fall blindly in love and then die.
It and its children will be driven only by the most trivial of instincts, the diversity and complexity of the world forever beyond them.
With your thumb and forefinger, you gently put the poor thing out of its misery. You feel its brown guts slide between your fingertips and flick the still twitching remains into the crackling fire before you. You are not beyond sympathy for those beneath you. You will not only free Equestria from the yoke of Celestia's immortal rule. You will free these humans from the bleakness of their feeble lives.
None of them know of the power commonplace to your home. But they will. As citizens of New Equestria they will be protected from hunger, protected from natural disasters or recruitment into one of the pointless conflicts which define their blood-befeebled world. Not only that, but as ponies they will no longer need to indulge in the savagery of murdering sentient beings to sustain themselves.
They will thank you when they see what Equestria has to offer. No, it is not the paradise promised by their crude conceptions of the afterlife. But it was a place where the creativity and kindness of their children will not be smothered in the cradle by the murderous tyranny of a maladjusted bureaucracy.
Like you, they will fulfill their destinies through evolution. And when victory is finally assured, they will spread their wings and ascend into the sunshine of a new golden age. You will make for a more intelligent and ambitious ruler than Celestia could ever be, and ponies would look back on you as the princess who liberated an entire planet.
"Sunset, are-are you alright?"
Celestia is speaking, but you can barely hear her. The pain and sorrow of the last three years has come crashing down and all you know is that you are still a child in this realm, and you are being sent to another orphanage to wait for rejection and neglect to consume you.
"Puh-please..." You beg, taking Celestia's hand and bringing it to your face. "Please don't make me leave again...I'm sorry for everything...just...don't make me go..."
Celestia and Luna are both trying to calm you down now, patting you on the back and assuring you that no one here intends you any harm. You try to get up and escape their gentle caresses, but the weight in your chest is too much and again you can do nothing but beg them to let you stay. You know you don't have any parents. A home. You know you don't belong at this school and that you never did.
But the alternative, of returning to that world of silent desperation and unspoken heartbreak is worse than jailtime could possibly be. You dwelled in this realm, pushing through its endless frustrations and disappointment under the illusion of meaningful accomplishment, of long promised victory. And now, faced with the crushing truth that you will never achieve your lifelong goal you can feel the vision of harmony you were just blessed with by Twilight and her friends slipping through your fingers. You suppose you really did spend too much time around humans, because it is clear that you are acting just like one of them right now.
The despair is pounding in your ears, the childhood trauma thrashing up your esophagus and throttling your lungs until every syllable becomes another shard of glass and the most coherent thing you can accomplish is to start sobbing.
The walls only stop closing in when Celestia takes you in her arms and hugs you tightly and whispers reassurances in your ears. And even though you know that she is not the mother that rescued you from anonymity, even though you know that the real thing has already seamlessly replaced you with a pony more beautiful and wise than you could ever be, you don't mind as much, because in that moment, for the first time since leaving Equestria, you feel safe.
"Sunset...what...what is this?" Celestia is pulling away now, her hands stained dark red. That's when you notice the stinging in your back has subsided, replaced only by numbness and dampness.
As you pass out, you realize that the blood loss must have been worse than you'd initially perceived.
This is it, the moment you have anticipated so often that it feels as if it has already happened. You try to savor the cool metal of the tiara against your temple.
Then the Element of Magic turns hot. Red hot. Too late you try to pry it off before it melts through your skull like a scrap of nuclear material. But the tiara doesn't come free, and you imagine that it has somehow become grafted to your skin and that you will now never be rid of its searing hatred for you. You can feel your body lifting up off the ground as you continue claw at your forehead, even gravity itself incapable of halting your metamorphosis.
Then light beams out from behind your eyes, blinding you to the horrified expressions of enemies and allies alike. A thousand magical equations grind against the inside of your skull and engrave themselves onto the rim of your retina. You can't see anything, but you can feel your bones reshaping. You can hear your spine popping as it elongates to fit your new form. You shed your fingernails like dead leaves, each replaced with a claw of bone thick enough to tear through a tank. Not that you'll need them to, considering how amplified your telekinesis is.
Skin sloughs away to reveal blood red scales strong enough to deflect bullets. And your hair...an extension of your destiny, an everlasting flame fuming from the back of your skull like a jet engine. The pain in your head crowns, followed by the creak of bone and a wicked horn rising from the center of your skull, the perfect amplifier for your now mana-drowned mind.
Your shoulders buckle and migrate to make room for a brand-new set of limbs. Two wings unfurl from your back, each wet with amniotic fluid. Not soft and fluffy like a pegasus' wings but sharp and leathery like those of a dragon.
No dragon ever had this much magic though. The pain is suddenly a minor inconvenience compared to the unimaginable power pulsing through you with every heartbeat. You suddenly know what Celestia feels like every day, what it is to have your very own sun burning at the center of your being.
You thought you understood magic before. When you envisioned this moment, you imagined yourself as a red and yellow alicorn, even more imposing and regal than Celestia herself. Instead, you have been reborn as a succubi from the most hadal regions of Tartarus. Something has gone wrong. That's for sure. But the glowing in your mind is too bright now to remember exactly what. This is your big moment after all. Why spoil it with unnecessary introspection?
Your first act is to transform your pitiful henchmen into proper enforcers. Next, you rip out the front of the school, eager to draw closer to your new subjects. You can smell them marinating in their own fear even from all the way out here and you wish you could say you were surprised. You knew they would reject you once the facade of humanity was shed. But you reassure yourself that they're devotion will grow once they realize what you are capable of granting them.
You consider it a mercy to rend consciousness from their minds and send them shuffling as thoughtless servants into the world beyond. You'll get around to reinstituting their free will to them once Celestia is imprisoned and the Equestrian sun is firmly under your thumb. You'll want them fully awake when the time comes to punish them for choosing Twilight over you.
You cackle something mocking to the former princess of magic. Celestia's prized student rendered powerless. You want her to know that her homeland will soon be yours, for all the obstacles that she and her mentor have put you through to get what has always been yours.
Years of planning fail to prepare you for what comes next. Twilight and her miserable accomplices beginning to glow and rise into the air, despite its total impossibility. Then a beam of multicolored madness launches out of them and wraps itself around you.
Suddenly you are the moth between the forefingers. Trapped between a raging volcano and an ever-peaceful ocean. You plunge into those crystal-clear waters, snuffing out the molten iron sizzling across your cerebellum and enjoying the muffled sounds of distant screaming that is not your own and the sensation of floating freely down to the soft sandy floor.
And suddenly you are back at the orphanage, playing tag with the other fillies. You're crying in your room because another birthday has come and no one has chosen you and the others slide a note beneath your door, listing all the reasons why they are glad you are still around. You're sitting at dinner when you find an extra cookie on your plate because the cook heard that you got your Cutie Mark today and knew you liked chocolate. Your drop a pencil on your first day of class and another unicorn levitates it over to you. You're studying for a big test and a teacher tells you to have fun with the other students before spring break is over. You're at the palace and Celestia is sharing a sunset with you. She shares with you the story of how she lost her parents and even though you can't see her face you know that she is crying. Pinkie is asking if you have any allergies so she can make cupcakes to welcome you to Canterlot High. Sentry Flash is holding the door for you, not because he has to but because he can. Rarity is asking where you get your hair done (even though you cut it yourself). Rainbow Dash is inviting you to join the soccer team, not because you're one of the best athletes in school, but because she wants to give you a chance to socialize. Applejack is offering to give you a ride in her pick-up truck. And Fluttershy is asking if petting one of her animals will make you feel better.
You wake up in the library to find a blanket draped over you, with a post-it on the computer in Miss Cherrilee's flowery cursive telling you to get your rest.
And suddenly the bruised organs and brutalized bones deep inside don't want to be in pieces anymore. Suddenly, they yearn to be healed, even if you don't fully understand what that means yet. Suddenly the softly singing melody playing in your ears is stronger than the incoherent roar of the fire, and you remember finally that you never wanted to rule any of these people. All your ambitions were so remote in comparison to those tiny moments of warmth. And you realize for the first time in three years that none of your scheming has once made you happy.
When you come to your senses, you're half buried in the rubble of your defeat and everything hurts. You can hear Twilight and her friends congratulating themselves as you crawl out, hot blood oozing down your back from the gashes where your wings demanifested. Luckily the jacket covers everything, and you force yourself to your feet. You have to apologize to Twilight before she leaves, no matter how meaningless that apology might be at this point. She and her friends have shown you something deeper and more meaningful than all your years of research, the closest thing to religious ecstasy you'll ever have.
It's so beautiful and so obvious that you feel overwhelmed with shame that you'd never conceived of its effectiveness earlier. But you're ashamed for too many reasons to count at right this moment, and you're just glad that the people you tried to enslave aren't coalescing into an angry mob so far.
Twilight leaves without demanding you return with her, and you are grateful beyond words for that as well. Despite all your criticisms of the human world, it is now closer to your heart than anything on the other side of that mirror. And you're not sure you'll ever be able to confront Celestia over your errors, let alone do so in the next five minutes.
That's when Vice Principal Luna puts a hand on your shoulder and asks you and your newfound friendship gurus to come to the principal's office.
Equestrian magic is rarely so violent. But the violation of the Element of Magic, channeled for reasons contrary to its purpose, by a creature it had never chosen, on the shores of a foreign reality, takes more than its toll on you. It takes a while before your body, newly adjusted to having its stomach back in the right place, is able to keep down solid food. You think that the hospital trip actually makes it easier for your fellow students to accept you back. Unlike ponies, humans have an innate need for reciprocity, one too primal to be so easily denied.
At least Twilight's friends don't seem happy to see you laid up for a couple days. And they are so generous with their time, each offering to visit each day and keep you company. You aren't even sure you can stand to be around people right now, but you're so thankful that they are there anyway because being alone might be even worse.
Luna and Celestia visit too. When the others have gone home for the day and the smiles and laughs have faded, Celestia has a very frank discussion with you about the nature of child welfare services in this state and the treatment of undocumented immigrants in this country. Then she asks you if you would feel uncomfortable staying with her until you're eighteen.
You aren't sure you'll ever be able to adequately express your thankfulness for that. Years of a disdain and contempt for yourself have ill-prepared you for the inundation of love and affirmation which has recently arrived in your life.
When you check out of the hospital, Celestia is by your side, walking you to her car and driving you to the edge of Canterlot. There's a little cottage waiting there for you, nothing as grand as the palace you once called home. Instead, the place is cluttered with the detritus of a carefully cultivated love for life. Letters from recently graduated students are framed alongside high school trophies. Books on astronomy share shelf space with glitter-stained pinecones.
And a family portrait hangs over the fireplace. A glowing man and a gloomy woman side by side, their hands resting on the shoulders of their two bright-eyed daughters, each as different as the sun and the moon. You notice Celestia is staring at the portrait as well. And you remember that moment of grief she shared with you in another world, a moment she was probably never able to share with Twilight.
And you suddenly know why your cutie mark is the way it is. You were never meant to supersede Celestia. You were made to help her, just as she once helped you (even if you failed to adequately appreciate her assistance at the time).
To fill the spaces bored in her heart just as she has filled yours. And to share this cluttered cottage with her for as long as she will have you.
