• Published 21st Oct 2016
  • 1,056 Views, 11 Comments

The Origin of Sunset Shimmer - Godslittleprincess



This is the story of how Sunset Shimmer got her shot. Set prior to "The Fall of Sunset Shimmer" by IDW.

  • ...
1
 11
 1,056

Chapter One: A Golden Fillyhood

Once upon a time, on the outskirts of Trottingham, there lived a happy, bright unicorn filly named Sunset Shimmer. Her family consisted of her father Mixer Match and her mother Prissy Pen, and she loved them both dearly, and they loved her in return.

Mixer Match was a perfumer by trade, a rather unusual choice of occupation for an earth pony. Even more unusually, he had a penchant for experimentation. He had a small laboratory next to their house where he would spend countless hours trying out new scent combinations, new perfume-making techniques, and new ideas for products. If he hadn’t discovered his passion for perfumery, Match would have likely become a chemist or a potion-maker.

Fortunately, most of Mixer Match’s experiments ended in success. Unfortunately, these successes came at the expense of several relentless attempts of trial and error. As a result, the air quality surrounding his family’s humble abode was only barely tolerable on most days, which was why they were living in the outskirts in the first place.

His wife and daughter didn’t mind much. They were accustomed to the results of Mixer Match’s overactive creativity. In fact, Sunset Shimmer seemed to take comfort in the rather pungent odor that surrounded their home. She saw it as a sign that her beloved father was doing something that made him happy, and when her parents were happy, she was also.

Now, Mixer Match owned a perfume shop and factory in the middle of Trottingham that made his creations readily available to the ponies of Equestria, but although Match’s skill in making his products were unparalleled, his skill in selling them was somewhere between abysmal and nonexistent. If the success of the factory and the shop had depended solely on him, he would have had to take a job at a rock farm just to survive. However, he had been able to find an outstanding business partner in his wife of many years, Prissy Pen.

Prissy Pen was a unicorn and had originally hailed from Canterlot, and as her name indicated, she was a master at turning chaos into order. She was seldom seen around the business without clipboard containing several lists which kept track of things such as products that were selling the most during a given month or how much to charge a certain item so that the price was profitable for the business yet affordable for the customer. Prissy’s competence in the management department was so amazing that her husband would often brag that by the time he tells her that the store was running low on bottles, she would have already ordered enough to last the year.

Prissy’s talent for organization not only manifested itself in the business but also in the home. She kept a corkboard on which she always posted fresh reminders and to-do lists for Match and Sunset every morning after waking, and every night before sleeping, she would throw out the old ones. This was not an easy feat since she was almost always the first one to wake and the last one to sleep. Prissy would even have breakfast prepared and on the table at the same time every day and still somehow have time to clean the kitchen to a spotless shine, all before either Match or Sunset even started waking up. In Sunset Shimmer’s eyes, her mother was the most amazing mare in the world, even if Prissy can be a little uptight and bossy sometimes.

Though, admittedly, Sunset and her father were somewhat difficult to keep up with, especially Sunset. You see, Sunset Shimmer had an amazing talent in magic and had already taught herself to perform spells that most unicorns her age didn’t even know about. She also inherited her father’s love for hooves-on learning, and each new spell that she learned gave her new ideas for possible untried variations and applications of the spell. Unfortunately, she lacked the experience necessary for her experiments to be much success, and Prissy Pen would often come home from managing the shop to find that her preciously precocious little filly had yet again accidentally blown a piece of furniture to bits or destroyed the garden or set the curtains on fire.

One day, Sunset Shimmer had decided to try out a spell that was supposed to merely straighten her mane. Imagine Prissy Pen’s surprise when her darling daughter entered the house with every single hair on her mane standing straight on end.

“Oh, horror of horrors!” cried Prissy, rushing her daughter to the bathroom. “Your beautiful mane! Oh, Sunset dearest, what have you done to it?!”

She levitated a stiff brush from the sink and began to run it through the briar patch that was once Sunset’s mane, but no matter how forcefully Prissy pushed the brush down, the defiant locks refused to bend to her will. After what felt like an eternity of brushing, combing, shampooing, conditioning, and detangling, Sunset Shimmer and her mother finally exited the bathroom, Sunset’s mane as limp and soggy as a wet sheepdog’s.

“Now, dear, I don’t mind you testing and sharpening your talents, but please do be more careful,” sighed Prissy. “How did you even become so accident-prone in the first place?”

As if in reply to her question, a loud crash rang outside, coming from the general direction of Mixer Match’s laboratory.

“Nothing to worry about, sweet pea,” shouted Match from outside, coughing a bit. “Just a minor setback. Nothing that I can’t fix.”


Later that night, as the family sat down for dinner, Sunset propped her right foreleg up on the table and rested her head on her hoof. She let out an exasperated and somewhat obnoxious sigh. Her parents turned toward her, looking at her quizzically.

“Now, now, my little miss sunshine, what’s the matter?” asked Mixer Match affectionately.

Sunset Shimmer only sighed once more, pushing away her plate and letting her head fall on the table with a soft thud.

“Come on, now, sun-shimmer. Just tell Papa what’s bothering you,” prodded Match.

Sunset raised her head, threw her forelegs up into the air, and cried, “I’m never going to be good at magic!”

At Sunset’s outburst, Prissy Pen shook her head and chuckled lightly, “Now, sweetheart, don’t be so modest. Most unicorns your age don’t even know half of the spells you do.”

“I guess,” shrugged Sunset, “but I just wish I could stop messing up all the spells that I came up with. I’ve already thought up dozens of ideas for new spells, but so far, none of them have worked.”

“You just have to keep trying. That’s all,” Match encouraged his daughter, “I know what it’s like not to have an idea work out right away.”

“But Papa, a lot of your ideas have actually worked. No matter how hard I try, none of mine have even left the drawing board.”

Sunset Shimmer took in a breath of air and heaved out a sigh, once again letting her head fall to the table. Mixer Match and Prissy Pen glanced at each other and frowned sympathetically before turning back to their daughter. Match put one hoof around Sunset while running the other through her previously silky but now coarse mane.

“You know, sunspot, I had the same problem when I was your age,” recounted Mixer Match. “I had a ton of different ideas for new potions and experiments, and just about every single one of them blew up in my face, often quite literally.”

“Really?” asked Sunset Shimmer, raising her head to look at her father in the eye.

“Really,” answered Match, nodding. “None of my ideas started working out until the old perfumer took me under his wing and taught me in the ways of chemistry and perfume. Well, not literally, under his wing, of course, since the old stallion was a unicorn.”

“Now, darling, are you suggesting that we find Sunset a teacher?” asked Prissy Pen. “You know how hard it is to find a good magic teacher outside of Canterlot, and I’m afraid that I won’t be of much help since I don’t know much beyond basic telekinesis.”

“Well, we have to try something. Why don’t we talk about it some more, and well, we’ll see?”

With that, Sunset’s parents each gave her a hug and a kiss on the forehead and lovingly sent her to bed. As Sunset Shimmer lay awake in her room, she began flipping through the pages of a notebook that she kept, by the light of a small candle on her bedside table. Once Sunset had reached the page where she had written about the spell that she had attempted earlier, she sighed, picked up her quill, and wrote the following: “Caused mane to stand straight on end. Problem remedied with several hours of treatment using mane care products and vigorous brushing. Mane became coarse and somewhat brittle after drying.”

Sunset Shimmer stuffed her notebook under her pillow and blew out the candle. She could not help but think about what her father had said earlier that night. Maybe he was right, and all she needed was a teacher to help her. How she and her family were going to find one she did not know.


The next morning, Sunset Shimmer woke up to the smell of fried eggs and buttered toast and smiled. She trotted into the kitchen to find her parents smiling at her knowingly. Her mother hummed merrily while her father whistled a light tune.

“Good morning, my beautiful, dear daughter,” greeted Prissy Pen, blithely.

“Good morning, Mama. Good morning, Papa,” replied Sunset. “Is today a special occasion?”

“Now why would we need a special occasion to be happy to see our little sunflower?” asked Mixer Match with a playful twinkle in his eye.

“Well, Papa, you and Mama only whistle and hum when the two of you have a surprise for me. Is it a good surprise?” inquired Sunset.

Mixer Match chuckled and patted his daughter on the head. Then he looked at his wife and asked, “Well, honeysuckle, looks like our daughter knows us a little too well. Should we tell her?”

Prissy giggled, looked at her daughter, and said, “Well, sweetie, your father and I decided that somepony with a gift like yours needs a magic teacher as soon as possible.”

“And since the best place to find a magic teacher is in Canterlot, we are going to be moving there,” added Match excitedly.

“Really?” exclaimed Sunset. “When?”

“Of course, we still have a few details to work out,” explained Prissy. “We’ll need to find a new home and a place to set up shop, and that’s not even mentioning how we are going to afford to do so.”

“Which is why we are going to start saving up for the move,” said Match placing a rather large coffee tin on the table. “Of course, we are going to need a lot more than just one tin of bits.”

“That’s the best news ever!” squealed Sunset. “Oh, thank you! Thank you so much!”

Sunset Shimmer rushed to give each of her parents a hug. Afterwards, Mixer Match scooped her up in his front hooves and pulled Prissy Pen into the hug as well. At that moment, Sunset Shimmer could not have felt luckier or more loved, and she wished that she could have stayed right at that moment in time forever.

Author's Note:

I seriously have no idea what I was thinking when I gave Sunset's parents their names. :facehoof: All I knew was that the names were alliterative (like Sunset Shimmer's) and that they matched their owners' personalities. I didn't really describe Match and Prissy's appearances in much detail because their coat, mane, and eye color weren't all that important to the story at this point, but I kind of pictured Match with a cornflower blue coat, a yellow mane, and brown eyes and Prissy with a rose coat, a black mane, and blue eyes. Please don't ask me how blue and rose equal gold or how yellow and black make bacon hair. Like most writers and fans, I don't really know how genetics in Equestria work. :twilightblush: