"Obviously, I am crushing Starlight Glimmer in a game of Canterlot Crusades."
"Crushing?" Starlight scoffed. "You're hanging on by a thread."
"Oh I assure you, everything has gone according to my designs." The yellowish unicorn slapped down a card, moving a few pieces across the board. "Every pawn I lost was a distraction, a sacrifice for my ultimate goal. BEHOLD!" She swiped up the dice in her hoof and rolled. "With my Mist of Dark spell, my soldiers have no trouble liberating the upper district from the tyranny of Celestial forces! And now that I have control of all the gem-stores in the city--"
"I don't get any new jewels, which makes it hard to pay for enchantment cards." Starlight nodded in acknowledgement. "Well played, you Lunar fiend. Still, your forces are spread thin."
"Perhaps." Sunset slid a card onto the board with a smirk. "But numbers are not my only strength."
Twilight Sparkle watched as Starlight grumpily removed a large number of her own troops. "No, I can see that you're playing a game now, but... why did you come here in the first place? If I had known you were coming--"
"It was a spur of the moment kind of thing. Just wanted to check how Sunburst was doing, you know?"
The alicorn's eyes darted from one unicorn to the other. "Oh, right! That makes sense. Sister initiative, huh?"
Starlight looked up from her cards with a frown. "Sister?"
"Yeah, turns out I'm Sunburst's long lost big sister," Sunset explained. "We were really surprised when we found out."
"But..." Starlight's face contorted. "You said you dated him!"
"Really surprised," Sunset stressed. "Apparently our dad had a fling with my mom once, and mom never told him she got pregnant, so..." She shrugged. "When I said we dated once, I was not exaggerating."
"Why didn't you say something, though? I mean, the way you were grilling me, you could have said 'I'm Sunburst's sister' and that would have made a lot more sense!"
Sunset hemmed a bit. "Well... it's just... we're not close, you know? I mean, sure, biosibs, and I feel for the guy, but there's not really that much... relationship between us. We met in college, then the whole weirdness with us being long-lost siblings, and... I dunno. I'm good with checking on his love life, not so much on doing his laundry, you know?"
Starlight looked at Sunset as though she had grown an extra head. "...why would you do his laundry?"
"Ape expression. Been living with them for a while, trying to correct my mistakes."
Twilight cleared her throat. "So, if you're here to check on Sunburst... how long do you plan on staying?"
"Oh, I was thinking I'd get going after we had our chat, so I'll probably be leaving later today."
"You do know Sunburst lives in the Crystal Empire, right?"
Sunset blinked. She looked around at the high, crystalline walls of the study room. "...Yeah? Aren't we in the palace right now?"
"Actually," Twilight explained, "I had the mirror moved to my castle after I moved in. Technically we're on the outskirts of Ponyville, which is just south of Canterlot."
"...You told me you lived in a tree-library!"
"Yeah, that... got blown up by a power-hungry centaur." The alicorn coughed. "Did I never mention that? I swear I brought it up at some point..."
"Well, that's just great," Sunset grumbled, putting her cards down. "Here I thought I'd be in and out in time for tomorrow's soaps. Now I'm going to have to buy a train ticket, which means I'm going to have to go back and get money, and--actually, the money there isn't bits, so I'm going to have to work with you to set up an exchange rate--"
"Or you could just ask me to pay for a ticket," Twilight suggested.
"Nah, I'm going to have to head back anyway to explain things, adjust my schedule, all that."
Starlight tilted her head. "Where are you going exactly?"
"It involves a magic mirror--"
"Um," Twilight interjected, "I don't know if we should talk about the mirror."
"Why, is it a state secret?"
The alicorn flicked her wings. "Weeeeeeeell, kiiiiind of... I mean it's not officially classified, but everypony who knows about it is technically classified as a high-priority asset by the Equestria military, so you know, secrecy by association..."
"Does that include Sunburst?"
"...oh, actually, no. I'm going to have to look into that, now that you mention it..."
Starlight Glimmer blinked. "Wait, is this the same mirror you said you got here by?"
Twilight blinked. "Sunset, how much did you tell her?"
"I said I got here via magic mirror. And now, I'll have to head back home and tell everyone that I'll be longer than expected."
"Does this have anything to do with the horde of teenage apes you tried to make an army out of?" Starlight asked.
"Yeah, they live on the other side of the mirror--" Sunset facehooved. "Oh. That's why Twilight wants to keep the mirror secret."
"Are these apes xenophobic or something?"
Twilight coughed. "More like they're the only known sapient species on their planet and have no natural magic but incredible technology, so we're... not exactly sure what to do with them."
"Huh. And you live with these creatures?"
"Live with them?" Sunset scoffed. "Starlight Glimmer, I'm one of them!"
"WHAT?!"
Okay, I must admit taking a slow burning route to the Sunset/Starlight romance is probably a better idea. Anyways, great chapter!
THAT'S NOT HOW YOU DROP A BOMBSHELL, SUNSET!
Sunset's alibi, though
I love how Starlight's so out of the loop, it's sick.
This continues to be delightfully insane. Definitely looking forward to seeing Sunburst get involved.
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Sunset isn't doing much better, really. Though some of that's on Twilight.
Love the way they fudged Sunset's existence.
One of the very first things brought up after Twilight showed up in Rainbow Rocks is that she has her own castle now. I seriously doubt Sunset would have forgotten that.
Dun dun dun!
7513967 It may have been lost somewhere in the excitement of things. Mind controlling siren, doubting her friend and all that stuff...
At least they spared her the real truth about Sunset (That Sunburst created her because he needed a prom date) Poor Starlight is close enough to brain breakage as it is...
They literally did date once.
They both thought to go ahead with the original prom date idea even after discovering Sunset's modosophont nature.
Ya know when you think about it, Sunset has a LOT of little surprises, doesn't she?
Honest mistake Sunset, how could she know that the giant crystal castle isn't actually a part of the Crystal Empire? I almost feel sorry for Starlight for finding out all this crazy stuff at once. Yeah, Sunburst's long lost sister, let's go with that. Of course somepony is going to slip up eventually. Probably when Starlight references something from her and Sunburst's shared youth and Sunset instantly chimes in (sharing most of Sunburst's memories and all).
Sunset would probably be willing to explain everything, this will probably give Twilight a headache.
lol Hilarious ending there.^^
7513882 Stealth bombers are all the rage these days!
Technically she's not one of them.
Soon. Just a few more revelations and Starlight's brain will break
In all honesty, a rather fun, if short chapter.
And then Sunset kidnapped Starlight and taught her to be a curious monkey with fingers.
As much as I enjoy the chapter, I can't help but wonder what Luna and Celestia think of the card game Sunset and Starlight are playing.
This. This is why her name is NOT Sunset Subtle. Anyway, we all know the real reason Glimglam isn't snogging him. She's too busy being "best friends" with Trixie.
And Starlight's brain malfunctioned, at least for a little while.
I like Sunset's approach though. Why walk around it when you can just bluntly say it all?
Good fib with being Sunburst's long lost sister. That is technically not a lie. The part about a different mother... oh well, white lies.
Somebody should make an actual canterlot crusades. I'd play it.
Then Starlight tracks down her human counterpart and finds her married to Sunburst and with a 6 year old daughter named Sunset Shimmer.
I wonder if we will get to the point when she finds out that Sunset isn't Sunbursts sister, but a female magical construct/clone of sunburst.
Moar brainmelting for glimglam
...I'm really wondering now what would happen if a child was produced by someone and their r63 clone. Genetically speaking, the original would have to be male and the copy female (because men have XY, women have XX. The clone could just duplicate the man's X without breaking anything, I'm pretty sure), and I think any offspring would be genetically identical to the parent matching their gender. Whether this leads to the typical buildup of birth defects is up for debate (the answer is "probably, but more slowly")
update please?
Needs moar, ASAP!
The opening of this chapter really gives me the mental image of Sunset, in a black robe, sitting on a huge-ass throne in front of a Rose Window looking out onto space. This mental image, combined with Sunset's victory in Equestria's version of Risk and the mention of Earth's technological advantage is the sort of thing that, I suspect, will make Starlight Glimmer more than a little nervous about just how safe Sunset is to have around and not in a dungeon.
I so wish this was canon. I can picture it all so clearly...
Come now. You're younger, so that makes you his little sister
An honest mistake, especially given the fact the mirror was originally in the crystal empire
Well, only when you're there
7516642 Have you seen the info for the latest Equestria Girls episodes? Dude, you called this!
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Not quite. Any given genome has two copies of each gene, so, half your genome is just sitting there, wating to be passed on to your offspring.
That's one of the reasons you can get so much variation in the children of the same two parents.
(And why inbreeding is a problem. If the parents each have one good copy and one bad copy of a gene, they're fine... but if they randomly pass down two bad copies to the same child... not fine. Inbreeding increases the chances that two parents will have bad copies of the same genes.)
...and then, on top of that, you have various things which affect gene expression (which genes are switched on or off) after the sperm and egg have fused into a zygote. (This is why you can have identical twins where one is gay and the other is straight, despite our sexual attraction instincts not being something you can choose. External factors affected gene expression after the single zygote gave rise to two separate fetuses.)
...and, if that weren't enough, there's also the fact that 44% of the human genome is made up of transposons (sequences of DNA that can move around during cell division, changing the meaning of the program).
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actually that is how "she" drops bombshells remember how twilight found out about sunset and sunburst
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Eeyup